Guides
What is Solana? Alpenglow explained, from 12.8-second finality to a 150 ms goal
Alpenglow is Solana's new consensus protocol. Its first part, Votor, went live on mainnet on October 21, 2026, replacing TowerBFT and cutting the time for a transaction to become final from about 12.8 seconds to a target of about 150 milliseconds.
Infrastructure
Solana swapped its consensus engine mid-flight: finality fell from 12.8 seconds to 150 ms
Alpenglow went live on Solana's main network on October 21, 2026, replacing the voting system the chain had run since day one. Payments now settle for good in a fraction of a second, validators pay a new fee, and the second half of the upgrade has no date.