Seconds-Long Waits Could End for This Altcoin: New Test for Major Speed Boost!
Solana is preparing for a broader testing phase of the Alpenglow upgrade, which aims to reduce the wait for transactions to finalize from approximately 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds. If the target is met, the network’s finality time could be shortened for many transactions, from exchange deposits to payments.
According to a CoinDesk report, Alpenglow has been tested for more than four months on a smaller network built for that purpose. The next step is to move the upgrade to Solana’s existing testnet. However, as of the morning of Wednesday, September 23, Anza’s tracking page still showed this transition as pending; the speed increase has not gone live on mainnet.
What could change for users?
Transaction finality means the network accepts a transaction as part of its permanent record. Exchanges wait for this stage before crediting deposits, cross-chain bridges before releasing funds on another network, and businesses before considering a payment complete. The 150-millisecond target aims to reduce this network-level wait to a small fraction of a second; it does not mean an exchange’s entire deposit process will be completed in the same amount of time.
Alpenglow replaces the existing TowerBFT system with a voting protocol called Votor. Today, validators’ votes are recorded on the blockchain, while under the new system, votes will be sent directly to one another, allowing consensus to be reached in one or two rounds. The way applications execute transactions will not change; users will not need to switch to different wallets.
Not all validator software is ready yet
Broader testing will assess not only the speed target but also whether the computers and services that run the network can transition to the new system together. Since this environment uses test tokens with no monetary value, transition issues can be investigated without putting users’ funds at risk.
Participating validators will need to use Agave 4.3, software developed by Anza. Jump Crypto’s alternative validator software, Firedancer and Frankendancer, does not yet support the Alpenglow test. Therefore, the initial transition attempt will be conducted using Agave.
Following a gradual rollout, Anza recommended Agave 4.3 to all mainnet validators on September 21. The September 28 date on the schedule is a tentative date for activating this release’s features on mainnet. This date is not Alpenglow’s confirmed mainnet launch date.