Solana blockchain has launched Alpenglow with goal of reducing transaction confirmation times to 150 milliseconds
25.10.2026 16:52
On October 21, 2026, the Solana blockchain activated the Alpenglow update on its mainnet, which replaced the previous TowerBFT consensus mechanism and is designed to speed up the final confirmation of transactions. According to the Solana Foundation, the new technology reduces the target transaction finalization time to approximately 150 milliseconds, compared to 12.8 seconds in the previous model.
Thus, the speedup provided by the technical architecture is approximately 99%.
The Alpenglow update is one of the most significant changes to Solana’s technological infrastructure since the blockchain’s launch in 2020.
According to the developers, the new mechanism was activated in epoch 1064. The transition to Alpenglow occurred at block number 459,653,000.
The previous TowerBFT algorithm relied on sequential voting by validators and the accumulation of confirmations across multiple blocks.
The new architecture provides for a direct exchange of votes among network participants and the generation of special certificates confirming consensus on the blockchain’s state.
As a result, final transaction confirmation can occur after just one or two rounds of voting.
A key component of the update is the Votor protocol, which governs the new block consensus process.
The second part of the architecture, Rotor, is designed to further optimize the distribution of information among validators. The timeline for its implementation has not yet been determined.
According to the Solana Foundation, the transition to the new system required the participation of a significant portion of the network’s validators.
At the time of activation, 654 validators were participating, and the transition certificate was generated with the participation of 446 of them, who held the required share of staked assets.
The developers emphasize that the change to the consensus mechanism does not affect the fundamental principles governing the execution of user transactions and smart contracts.
For regular users, the update should primarily result in shorter wait times for final confirmation of transfers and other operations.
At the same time, Alpenglow is changing the technical requirements for validators and certain software interfaces, so application developers must take the new rules for processing block information into account.
Faster finalization could be particularly significant for decentralized exchanges, settlement systems, payment applications, and financial asset tokenization projects.
The faster a transaction achieves finality, the less time a financial service needs to confirm the receipt of funds or complete a transaction.
However, the stated 150 milliseconds is a technical target rather than a guaranteed time for the actual confirmation of each transaction.
According to an independent study by OpenChainBench published on October 23, the median transaction finalization time on the mainnet after the update was approximately 404 milliseconds, compared to about seven seconds before the implementation of Alpenglow.
Thus, based on the results of this measurement, the actual speedup was approximately 17-fold.
The researchers note that confirmation times depend on the measurement method, network infrastructure, and the nodes used.
Despite the large-scale update, the SOL cryptocurrency has not shown sustained growth.
According to CoinPaprika, as of October 25 at approximately 10:00 UTC, the token’s price was approximately $100.9, which is 2.9% lower than it was seven days ago.
Solana is a public blockchain designed for digital payments, trading crypto assets, using smart contracts, and building decentralized applications.
The engineering firm Anza, among others, is responsible for developing key components of the network’s software infrastructure.
Теги: Solana Blockchain cryptocurrency technology transaction Переглядів: 97