Solana sets Alpenglow upgrade for Oct. 21 to target 150ms finality
CIE News ·
The Solana Foundation has scheduled the Alpenglow upgrade for Oct. 21, 2026, aiming to cut finality to roughly 150 milliseconds by ending on-chain validator voting, CoinDesk reported.
The Solana Foundation has scheduled its Alpenglow network upgrade for Oct. 21, 2026, targeting a transaction finality time of roughly 150 milliseconds, according to CoinDesk. The change replaces the TowerBFT voting mechanism used since 2020 by enabling validators to pass votes directly between themselves and form completion certificates rather than submitting votes as standard on-chain transactions.
Because validator voting records will no longer occupy block space, headline transaction counts on Solana may decrease significantly after activation despite stable underlying user activity, CoinDesk reported. The network transition will also lower validator voting expenses from around 1 SOL per epoch to a fixed admission fee of 0.8 SOL.
The migration is set to launch during epoch 1064 around 15:00 UTC on Oct. 21, 2026, switching to Alpenglow approximately 18 minutes after the first 5,000 slots conclude. Node operators must run software based on Agave 4.3.0, as client implementations Frankendancer and Firedancer will not support the initial network switch.