Solana Sets a Date for Its Next Major Upgrade
Solana plans to activate Alpenglow on mainnet on October 21, replacing its TowerBFT consensus system with Votor. The upgrade aims to reduce transaction finality from about 12.8 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds by moving validator votes off-chain and allowing blocks to finalize in one or two voting rounds. Users need take no action, and Solana’s apps, transaction formats, programs and fees remain unchanged. Validators will pay a 0.8 SOL per-epoch admission fee; those unable to pay cannot vote or produce blocks for the next epoch. TowerBFT will remain active for about 18 minutes after the feature gate turns on, providing a transition period. The change received 98.27% approval in a 2025 validator vote. Alpenglow’s separate Rotor component, which will replace block-data broadcasting system Turbine, has no scheduled launch date.
