Solana Switches On Alpenglow, Its Biggest Network Change in Years

Solana's main network has moved to a new consensus system called Alpenglow. Consensus is the process validators use to agree that transactions are final.

According to the Solana Foundation, Alpenglow went live at the start of epoch 1064 on Wednesday, Oct. 21, at about 13:36 UTC (9:36 a.m. ET). The network kept running its old TowerBFT system for roughly 18 more minutes before handing over. The foundation said 446 of the network's 654 validators signed off on the switch.

The main goal is speed. Under TowerBFT, a transaction took about 12.8 seconds to become final. Alpenglow aims for about 150 milliseconds. The foundation says wallets and apps should keep working as before, and fees and programs are unchanged.

This first phase adds only Alpenglow's new voting system, called Votor. A second part, Rotor, will change how block data spreads across the network. It is planned for a later release and has no date yet. Anza, the developer that built Alpenglow, had already run the upgrade on Solana's test networks in September.