Solana sets Oct. 21 for Alpenglow mainnet upgrade

Solana has set October 21 for the Alpenglow mainnet upgrade, a major overhaul targeting cutting transaction finality from about 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds. The switch replaces the network's existing validator voting system with a faster certificate-based consensus (the direct-voting protocol Votor), letting validators settle on a block after one or two rounds instead of a long chain of onchain votes.

• The upgrade removes vote transactions from blocks, which could sharply change headline transaction counts even if user activity stays flat.
• Alpenglow is already running on both public test networks, giving application teams a place to check their software before the live switch.
• If successful, exchanges, bridges and merchants could treat payments as irreversible almost immediately; no changes are required for end users or wallets.