Solana has scheduled the Alpenglow upgrade for Oct. 21, a significant overhaul designed to make transactions irreversible in approximately 150 milliseconds by revamping the network’s consensus mechanism.
The revised timeline, published by the Solana Foundation, sets the date for replacing TowerBFT—the voting system used since the network’s 2020 launch. The 150-millisecond figure remains a target, with actual performance contingent on network conditions.
This development is significant because while Solana payments already appear successful near-instantly, Alpenglow seeks to provide a much stronger guarantee of irreversibility almost as quickly.
Consequently, merchants awaiting finality before accepting payments, or bridges before releasing funds on other chains, can operate with reduced latency.
Currently, validators—the nodes that verify transactions and secure the network—submit votes as on-chain transactions. Alpenglow will enable them to exchange votes directly and aggregate sufficient approvals into a certificate that finalizes a block within one or two voting rounds.
This change may produce an unusual metric on activation day: Solana’s transaction count could drop sharply as validator votes are removed from blocks, even if user activity maintains its previous pace.
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