Solana has started testing Alpenglow, a major overhaul of its blockchain consensus system, as SOL’s price and activity across the network continue to rise.
The upgrade is designed to reduce transaction finality to about 150 milliseconds, compared with roughly 12.8 seconds under TowerBFT, the consensus mechanism currently used by Solana validators to agree on blocks.
Alpenglow will replace the existing consensus layer without changing the Solana Virtual Machine, transactions, programmes or fees.
Its first phase introduces Votor. The system replaces the vote transactions currently placed on-chain by validators with votes sent directly between them. Those votes are then combined into certificates, allowing blocks to be finalised after one or two voting rounds.
According to Solana, the change could reduce the time needed for an irreversible transaction by about 99%.
Anza, the developer of Solana’s Agave validator software, said the testnet rollout had begun. The upgrade is expected to move next to devnet before eventually reaching mainnet-beta.
The transition follows months of preparation involving validators and infrastructure providers. Systems that stream blocks, monitor votes or depend on Solana’s current commitment structure will need to be adapted as the new consensus model is introduced.
A separate stage of Alpenglow will add Rotor, which is intended to replace Turbine, Solana’s existing method for distributing block data across the network. Rotor is being scheduled independently, leaving Votor and faster finality as the immediate priorities.
The consensus changes come after another series of performance improvements. Solana activated Transaction V1 this month, increasing the maximum transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes. Its slot-time roadmap has also gradually reduced the target from 400 milliseconds towards 200 milliseconds.
SOL and Solana network activity increase
SOL was trading at about $117 at press time after nearing $120 earlier this week, placing it around its strongest level since late January. The token has risen by roughly 25% over the past month, according to CryptoSlate data.
Activity involving tokenised traditional assets has also expanded. Real-world assets on Solana reached about $4.6bn in early September, after the sector passed $4bn for the first time in August.
Trading volumes have increased alongside that growth. Solana decentralised exchanges recorded about 208m individual spot trades in the week ending 13 September, compared with roughly 190m on the New York Stock Exchange, data cited by the Kobeissi Letter showed. The difference with Nasdaq narrowed to about 47m trades.
Jupiter recorded more than 80m trades during September, a 38% increase from the previous month.
The network’s expanding activity has contributed to a more bullish investment case among some long-term Solana backers. Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, reportedly said he expected SOL’s market capitalisation to exceed Ethereum’s during the current market cycle. He argued that developers were increasingly choosing Solana and highlighted its recent lead over Ethereum in network fees.
However, the valuation gap remains significant. Samani’s comparison placed Solana at about $58bn, against approximately $293bn for ETH.
Alpenglow’s progress will now be assessed on testnet by validators and infrastructure providers before the upgrade moves to devnet and, ultimately, the mainnet supporting Solana’s trading and tokenised-asset activity.
