Solana Sets Sights on Faster Transaction Finality with Alpenglow Upgrade

Solana is planning a major upgrade to its consensus system, known as Alpenglow. The upgrade aims to improve transaction finality on the network, reducing it from around 12.8 seconds under the current TowerBFT system to roughly 150 milliseconds.

The testnet and devnet activation for Alpenglow is scheduled for the third quarter of 2026. This will be followed by mainnet activation tied to Anza's v4.3 release schedule.

Alpenglow consists of two phases: Votor, which replaces on-chain vote transactions with direct validator votes and aggregated certificates, and Rotor, which replaces Turbine's system for distributing blocks across the network.