Solana's Alpenglow Upgrade Aims for Lightning-Fast Transaction Finality

Solana is set to undergo a major upgrade called Alpenglow, which will aim to reduce transaction finality from 12.8 seconds to 100-150 milliseconds. This overhaul is not just about cutting latency, but also rebuilding Solana's consensus architecture for demanding financial applications.

The upgrade replaces key parts of Solana's engine with Votor and Rotor. Votor allows validators to exchange signed messages directly, freeing up block space that currently goes towards internal coordination. This could potentially free up 75% of block space for users and applications.

Alpenglow also introduces a '20+20' security model, which can preserve safety even if up to 20% of validators are malicious or offline. The upgrade has already received over 98% validator approval and has been tested on a community cluster since May.