Solana Alpenglow upgrade moves to public testnet

According to CoinDesk, Solana's Alpenglow upgrade now resides on its public test network, allowing engineers to measure how transaction finality drops from roughly 13 seconds to 0.15 seconds. This update replaces TowerBFT with a voting mechanism called Votor, permitting validators to finalize blocks after only one or two rounds of direct votes.

In the existing TowerBFT framework, validators gather votes across 32 slots prior to a block achieving finality. Alpenglow removes this sequence of on-chain votes. Application behavior stays the same, and users have no need to swap wallets or change how they transfer funds.

Validators joining the test must operate Agave 4.3, which Anza urged all mainnet validators to install on Sept. 21. Anza first rolled out this software to nodes controlling 10% and then 25% of the network’s security stake. Jump Crypto’s alternative validator clients, Firedancer and Frankendancer, do not yet support this Alpenglow test.

This upgrade has run on a dedicated, smaller network for more than four months. Although Anza’s schedule marks Sept. 28 as a tentative debut for Agave 4.3 features on mainnet, this date does not guarantee the Alpenglow launch.