Described as Solana’s biggest technical change since 2020, Alpenglow aims to reduce transaction completion time from six seconds to approximately 150 milliseconds.
Solana is preparing to activate the Alpenglow update on the mainnet on October 21st, an update that significantly changes how the network reaches consensus among validators. If the update is successful, transaction finalization time could drop from approximately six seconds to as little as 150 milliseconds.
In the current system, validators’ votes are written directly to the blockchain like other transactions. A sufficient number of votes must accumulate on the chain for a transaction to be considered irreversible. Alpenglow, however, moves the votes off-chain and consolidates them into specific certificates. This aims to finalize transactions in one or two rounds.
If the target of approximately 150 milliseconds can be maintained under real mainnet conditions, Solana transactions could be finalized up to forty times faster. This change could particularly reduce waiting times in decentralized finance applications such as exchange deposits, blockchain-based payments, and those experiencing rapid price fluctuations.
A decrease in the number of transactions displayed on Solana is expected after the update. This is not due to a decrease in user activity, but rather to validator votes, which were previously counted as transactions, being moved off-chain. Therefore, directly comparing network statistics before and after the update may be misleading.
Alpenglow is also expected to reduce validator costs by approximately 60 percent. Under the current system, validators spend around 2 SOL per day for voting, while the new system plans for a fixed participation fee of 0.8 SOL per session, lasting approximately 24 hours.
The update comes after six test network restarts and a failed migration attempt that was reversed. Therefore, the 150-millisecond performance target should not be considered final until results are seen on the main network.
*This is not investment advice.
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