Alpenglow Takes Over Solana Devnet in Bid for Faster Finality
Solana's new consensus protocol, Alpenglow, has officially started operating on devnet. According to Anza, the company behind Solana's main client software Agave, the handoff from the old TowerBFT consensus protocol was completed at slot 504,148,999. This marked the formation of the Alpenglow genesis block and the retirement of TowerBFT.
As part of this transition, a five-day observation period has been initiated to prepare for the mainnet-beta migration. During this time, app developers are encouraged to test their programs and integrations using the new consensus protocol.
The Alpenglow upgrade aims to significantly reduce finality time from around 12.8 seconds to approximately 150 milliseconds. This change is expected to improve the overall performance of Solana's network by reducing the time it takes for transactions to be confirmed.