Ethereum and Solana Unleash Network Upgrades to Unlock Institutional-Scale Use
Ethereum's upcoming Glamsterdam and Solana's Alpenglow upgrades are set to improve their networks' speed, reliability, and capacity for institutional-scale use.
Glamsterdam is Ethereum's next hard fork, which includes two key proposals: Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) and Block-Level Access Lists (BALs). ePBS aims to separate block proposing from block building directly into the protocol, making it fairer for validators. BALs will enable parallel transaction execution, paving the way for higher throughput on Layer 1.
Alpenglow is Solana's most significant consensus change in history, replacing Tower BFT with Votor and Turbine with Rotor. Votor moves validator votes off-chain, reducing block space consumption and increasing resilience. The upgrade targets a 150-millisecond finality time, an 85-fold improvement over the current 12.8 seconds.
Both upgrades have reached their final devnet stages and are moving to public testnets. Glamsterdam is expected to activate on Ethereum's mainnet in Q4 2026, while Alpenglow went live on Solana's public testnet on September 22 and will begin feature activation on mainnet on September 28.