Solana's Alpenglow upgrade scheduled for October 21 replaces TowerBFT consensus, reducing finality time from 12.8 seconds to ~150ms.

Tech & Launches · 2026-10-14

Solana is activating its Alpenglow upgrade on October 21, replacing the TowerBFT consensus system with a new voting protocol that reduces transaction finality from 12.8 seconds to approximately 150 milliseconds. The upgrade moves validator votes off-chain, allowing blocks to finalize after a single round of voting when 80% or more of stake supports them. Vote transactions will no longer appear in blocks, meaning Solana's reported transaction counts will decline without any change in actual network activity.

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