Solana Activates Alpenglow Upgrade on Devnet and Testnet

The Solana Foundation has activated its Alpenglow upgrade on both the devnet and testnet, marking a significant step towards achieving faster transaction settlement times. The upgrade aims to reduce finality from approximately 12.8 seconds to around 150 milliseconds.

Alpenglow changes how validators agree on the network's records by allowing them to exchange votes directly instead of recording those votes as transactions inside blocks. This change is expected to make some Solana activity charts fall, as transaction totals that include validator votes will shrink even if users make just as many payments and trades.

No firm launch date has been announced for the live network, but Anza's software schedule tentatively allows feature activations to resume on September 28. The speed target of 150 milliseconds remains a goal derived from simulations rather than demonstrated results under real-world conditions.