Solana sets October 21 for Alpenglow upgrade, targeting 150-millisecond finality

The switch replaces Solana's existing validator voting system, removes vote transactions from blocks, and could sharply change headline transaction counts even if user activity remains steady.

Solana has October 21 scheduled for Alpenglow, a major upgrade that aims to make transactions irreversible in about 150 milliseconds by changing the way the computers running the network agree on payments.

An updated timeline released by the Solana Foundation sets a date for replacing TowerBFT, Solana's voting system, from its launch in 2020. The 150ms figure remains a target with actual performance depending on network conditions.

Solana's payment can seem successful almost immediately. But Alpenglow plans to give it a stronger guarantee that it can't be returned nearly as quickly.

A merchant waiting for that guarantee before accepting a payment, or a bridge before releasing funds on another blockchain, can act sooner.

Starting today, validators, or the computers that verify transactions and help secure Solana, will send their votes as recorded transactions on the blockchain. Alpenglow allows them to exchange votes directly and combine enough confirmations into a single certificate that finalizes a block after one or two rounds of voting.

However, this can produce a strange result on the day of activation. The number of Solana transactions may drop drastically as validation votes disappear from blocks, even if people continue to trade and pay at the same rate.

Validators must also be prepared for the switch. Operators need software built on Agave 4.3.0. Firedancer and Frankendancer, the alternative programs used to perform validation, do not support initial migration, which requires their operators to be temporarily replaced.

Removing vote transactions also changes the amount of creditor payouts. Their current voting fees of approximately 1 SOL per period will disappear and be replaced by a fixed admission fee of 0.8 SOL. A period is a period during which Solana delegates its network responsibilities to validators.

The migration is scheduled for period 1064, which is expected to begin around 15:00 UTC on October 21. Solana will continue to use its old voting system for the first 5,000 slots, short windows allotted for block generation, before switching to Alpenglow approximately 18 minutes later.

Diversified RWA stablecoins maintain a 5-7% return on real credit as crypto capital drops to 4%. GENIUS increases performance off-chain. TAM increases to $4 billion in 3 years.