A newly approved update is set to slash transaction resolution times on the Solana blockchain from 12.8 seconds to an estimated median of 150 milliseconds.
The Solana community overwhelmingly accepted the proposed ‘Alpenglow’ update this week, with 98% of voters in favour. The poll took place over two weeks, and more than half of all Solana validators cast votes.
The changes are expected to “bring Solana to an unprecedented performance level,” according to an Alpenglow blog announcement in May.
Protocol overhaul
The update represents a major overhaul of Solana’s core consensus protocol, replacing the currently in place Proof-of-History and TowerBFT mechanisms, according to a recent proposal text on Solana’s forum.
Following the near 100x increase in speed “Solana could realize Web2-level responsiveness with L1 finality, unlocking new use cases that require both speed and cryptographic certainty,” the Solana Foundation wrote in a 21 Aug blog post.
The chain’s native token, SOL, has climbed more than 5% since the upgrade was confirmed.
Performance, security
The original authors of the Alpenglow proposal, Quentin Kniep, Kobi Sliwinski, and Roger Wattenhofer, point to “the need to address both performance and security limitations in Solana’s legacy consensus protocol TowerBFT” in a 14 Aug post on the Solana forum. At present, Solana’s Proof-of-History timestamps transactions and maintains their order, and TowerBFT manages validator voting.
Alpenglow will overhaul those systems, bringing “lower latency, improved fault tolerance, and generally greater protocol efficiency,” according to the authors.
The new architecture is expected to be on the Solana Testnet in December 2025 and live sometime during Quarter 1 2026.
