Solana Alpenglow Goes Live in 'Most Ambitious' Upgrade Since Ethereum's Merge
Solana activated Alpenglow, its largest consensus upgrade since launch, replacing TowerBFT at slot 459,653,000. The protocol reduces transaction finality from about 12.8 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds by having validators exchange stake-weighted votes directly, with two voting paths for reaching consensus. It is designed to tolerate malicious and offline stake while adapting block times during network disruption. The upgrade was approved by validators with 98% support and underwent testing and security reviews before mainnet activation. Further planned upgrades would improve data propagation, leader rotation and quantum resistance, but have no scheduled dates. Alpenglow may also enable proposals to remove Solana’s block compute-unit cap, a change critics say could advantage well-funded validators and increase centralization.
