Solana validators vote to activate the Alpenglow upgrade! Block finalization time will be reduced to 150 milliseconds.

Solana (SOL) is moving towards the largest consensus reform in history. The upgrade named Alpenglow (proposal number SIMD-0326) has officially entered the validators voting stage, aiming to significantly reduce the block finality time from the current 12.8 seconds to 100–150 milliseconds, comparable to the speed of Web2 applications. If the vote passes, this will fundamentally change Solana’s position in the L1 blockchain competition.

Voting Progress and Threshold

(Source: X)

Currently, more than 10% of validators have expressed support for the Alpenglow upgrade, but to be officially approved, it needs to reach:

1. At least 33% of validators participate in the voting.

2. The number of votes in favor must account for two-thirds of the total votes for and against.

The voting process is conducted according to the Solana blockchain epoch:

Period 833–838: Discussion Stage

839 Period: Equity Weight Announcement

Period 840–842: Token distribution and official voting

Validators will receive voting tokens through the distribution tool developed by Jito, and vote in favor of, against, or to veto the address.

Core Transformation of Alpenglow

Alpenglow will replace the existing Proof of History (PoH) + TowerBFT architecture, with the core introducing Votor - a lightweight direct voting protocol:

1. Near-instant finality: reduced from 12.8 seconds to 100–150 milliseconds.

2, One or two rounds of voting are sufficient to complete the Block confirmation.

3. The encryption aggregation technology reduces network costs and traffic pressure.

Community comments describe this as a “combination of Web2 speed and Blockchain security.”

Dual Enhancement of Performance and Security

Alpenglow upgrade proposes solutions to the existing pain points of Solana:

20+20 Fault Tolerance: Even if 20% of validators are malicious and 20% are offline, the network can still operate normally.

Economic Fairness: Validators are required to pay 1.6 SOL “Validator Admission Ticket” (VAT) to ensure the binding of interests.

Off-chain voting: Remove time-slot based voting transactions to reduce bandwidth and costs.

Reward Optimization: Voting aggregators and validators receive the same rewards, and additional bonuses are provided to those who issue completion certificates.

Why this upgrade is crucial

The current TowerBFT lacks formal security guarantees, and the final confirmation time is too long, which can easily lead to block reorganization and performance degradation.

The landing of Alpenglow will:

Significantly enhance trading experience: Developers and traders can achieve transaction finality within sub-second time.

Enhance network security: Reduce reorganization risks

Enhancing L1 competitiveness: Competing head-to-head with public chains like Ethereum, Aptos, and Sui in terms of speed and security.

Conclusion

Alpenglow is not just a technical upgrade, but a significant practice of Solana’s vision of “high speed + decentralization”. If the vote passes and is successfully deployed, Solana will become one of the first public chains to achieve Web2 level transaction speeds without sacrificing security. This could be a game-changing turning point for developers, traders, and the entire ecosystem.