Key facts
- Solana's Alpenglow upgrade targets 150 millisecond transaction finality.
- The upgrade will reduce finality from approximately 12.8 seconds.
- New consensus mechanism is more robust against malicious or offline validators.
- Headline transaction counts may decrease as validator voting changes.
Solana is preparing to significantly enhance its network speed with the Alpenglow upgrade on October 21, aiming to reduce transaction finality from approximately 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds. This upgrade, developed by core dev shop Anza, is designed to make the network more appealing to institutional investors by increasing its resilience against validator issues. The new consensus mechanism will allow the chain to maintain finality even if a substantial portion of staked SOL acts maliciously or goes offline. However, the change in how validators vote may lead to a reported decrease in headline transaction counts, though actual user activity is expected to remain the same. This marks phase one of a two-part upgrade, with the second phase still awaiting a date.