Solana's largest network upgrade Alpenglow is online, with the final confirmation time reduced to about 150 milliseconds

Solana's largest network upgrade since 2020, Alpenglow, officially launched on Wednesday. This upgrade moves validator voting from on-chain to off-chain, packaging votes into certificates that can lock transactions within one to two rounds, aiming to reduce the final confirmation time for transactions from about 6 seconds to approximately 150 milliseconds, speeding it up by about 40 times. If this goal is achieved on the mainnet, Solana's transaction settlement speed will be faster than the blink of an eye, bringing it closer to the trading and payment experience of centralized exchanges.

Currently, a 6-second confirmation time means that prices may change before the transaction is locked, causing exchanges and payment applications to wait before considering deposits as complete. In comparison, Ethereum takes about 13 minutes to achieve full final confirmation. At the same time, validator costs are expected to decrease by about 60%: currently, validators spend about 2 SOL daily on voting fees, which doubled after Solana recently reduced block time to about 200 milliseconds; Alpenglow eliminates voting fees, replacing them with a fixed validator entry fee of 0.8 SOL per epoch (approximately 24 hours).

The upgrade launch process was not smooth. The testnet has been cleared and restarted from scratch six times since its launch in early May, with one migration failing across the entire network and having to be rolled back. According to an article published by Galaxy Digital, one of about 100 validator operators on the testnet, a subsequent migration was successfully completed, clearing the way for Wednesday's launch. Since these events occurred on a network built specifically for testing, there was no risk to real funds. The upgrade was scheduled to switch at the start of epoch 1064 on Wednesday, with actual changes occurring at slot 459,653,000 after a transition of 5,000 slots.