Alpenglow Upgrade Hits Solana Testnet: Payment Finality Target Cut by 99%

Solana's Alpenglow upgrade has moved to the network's public testnet as developers aim to cut payment finality from 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds.

The current TowerBFT consensus will be replaced with a voting protocol called Votor, which allows validators to send votes directly to one another and settle on a block after one or two rounds, removing the long chain of on-chain votes.

This change is expected to have significant implications for applications that rely on payment finality, such as exchanges, bridges, and merchants. They will be able to treat payments as irreversible almost immediately, allowing for more efficient and streamlined operations.