Solana’s Alpenglow Upgrade Set for October 21 With 150-Millisecond Finality Target

The Solana blockchain will host an upgrade known as Alpenglow, which will make transactions irreversible in 150 milliseconds through the revision of how computers that power the network reach agreement on payments. The upgrade will go live on October 21, and the latest timetable released by the Solana Foundation also shows when TowerBFT will be replaced, having been used by the blockchain since its inception in 2020. The 150 milliseconds will remain the target, but the performance will depend on the network's status. 

Alpenglow Will Replace Solana's Existing Validator Voting Mechanism

The network status is important because a Solana payment can succeed within this period quite promptly. But Alpenglow seeks to provide a more certain guarantee that this success cannot be reversed. A merchant who needs that assurance before accepting a transaction, or a bridge that would have to release funds from another blockchain, can do so sooner.

Until now, validators, which are the machines that verify transactions and ensure security on the Solana network, have been sending their votes in the form of transactions on the blockchain. Alpenglow will be able to send their votes in exchange for a certificate after one or two rounds of voting.

There will be a dramatic reduction in the number of transactions Solana can execute due to the disappearance of the votes within the block, even though people will continue to trade and make payments as before. The operators require software that is based on Agave 4.3.0. The Firedancer and Frankendancer are alternative software packages that are used to run validators and will not be able to support the initial migration process. 

Eliminating the vote transactions also alters the payment system for validators. The validators currently paying voting fees of around 1 SOL per epoch will no longer have to pay that, and instead will pay 0.8 SOL just once. The term epoch refers to the time period where Solana selects validators for handling network operations. The transition has been planned for epoch 1064 and will be completed around 15:00 UTC on October 21. Solana will be using its previous voting procedure for the first 5,000 slots before it transitions to Alpenglow in approximately 18 minutes. 

Similar to Solana, at the start of this month, the Ethereum network also announced the plan to launch its Glamsterdam update on the Sepolia testnet, bringing its upcoming scaling solution closer to being tested on a live network. The Ethereum Foundation confirmed that its largest changes include alterations to block building, block validation, and state handling by clients while processing transactions.