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Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade goes live, targeting 150ms finality

Solana switched its mainnet to Alpenglow, targeting finality in about 150 milliseconds while leaving wallets, apps and transaction fees unchanged for users.

Uruguay Can Editorial

Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade goes live, targeting 150ms finality

Solana’s validators had used TowerBFT since the network launched in 2020; on Oct. 21, they switched the mainnet to Alpenglow, a new consensus protocol designed to make transactions final much faster. The Solana Foundation’s upgrade page says the change went live in epoch 1064 and targets finality in about 150 milliseconds, down from roughly 12.8 seconds.

What changes for you when a Solana transaction is final?

For you, a transaction should become irreversible sooner. Finality is the point at which a transaction can no longer be reversed, and faster finality can let apps, exchanges and merchants treat a payment or transfer as settled sooner. The 150-millisecond figure is a target reported by the Foundation, rather than a guarantee for every transaction.

Alpenglow changes how validators agree on blocks. Under TowerBFT, validators recorded their votes as on-chain transactions, and enough votes had to accumulate before a block was final. With Alpenglow, validators send votes directly to each other and bundle them into certificates; a block can then be finalized after one or two rounds of voting.

Do wallets, apps or fees need to change?

No action is needed from most users: the Foundation says wallets and apps continue to work as before, and the upgrade leaves transaction execution, transaction formats and fees unchanged. The change is beneath the user-facing layer, in how validators reach agreement.

That distinction also matters when you compare network activity. Because validator votes no longer appear as transactions in blocks, transaction counts and TPS figures can fall without a corresponding drop in user activity, the Foundation says. The change affects how those figures should be read, not how you send a transaction.

What changed for validators and developers?

Validators now use Alpenglow to reach consensus, while developers who only send transactions and read account state have no migration to make. But block-streaming services and indexers may need to handle new bank identifiers and adjust how they process blocks. Decrypt’s report on the mainnet handoff also notes the significance of replacing TowerBFT, which Solana had used since launch.

Sources