Solana Tests Alpenglow Upgrade with Public Testnet

Solana has moved its Alpenglow consensus upgrade to a public testnet, where it will be tested for reducing transaction finality from roughly 13 seconds to about 150 milliseconds. The move follows more than four months of operation on a smaller dedicated network.

Alpenglow is designed to replace TowerBFT with Votor, a voting protocol that lets validators exchange votes directly and reach agreement in one or two rounds. This upgrade will not change Solana's virtual machine, transaction formats, programs, fees, or account model.

The public testnet uses test tokens with no real value, allowing developers to test, debug, and reset the network without affecting user funds. Validators participating in the migration must run Agave 4.3, while Firedancer and Frankendancer do not yet support the Alpenglow test.