Solana's Alpenglow Upgrade Aims for Near-Instant Transaction Finality

Solana is working on a major upgrade to its consensus system called Alpenglow, which could significantly speed up transaction finality. Currently, it takes around 12.8 seconds for transactions to become final, but with Alpenglow, this time could be reduced to approximately 150 milliseconds.

This change doesn't affect how Solana executes transactions but rather how validators confirm them as final. Under the current TowerBFT system, validators vote by sending vote transactions that are included in blocks. In contrast, Alpenglow's Votor system removes these votes from blocks and instead allows validators to communicate their votes directly, aggregating them into cryptographic certificates.

The impact of this upgrade could be substantial for on-chain payments. Merchants might treat transactions as irreversible much sooner, exchanges could release deposited funds more quickly, and payment applications could provide users with near-immediate confirmation of transactions.