Solana News Today: Solana's 150ms Finality Rivaling Visa, Backed by 98% Validator Support

The Solana network has taken a major step forward with the approval of its Alpenglow upgrade, a transformative consensus rewrite designed to slash transaction finality times from 12.8 seconds to approximately 150 milliseconds. The upgrade, formally known as SIMD-0326, was overwhelmingly approved by the Solana community, with 98.27% of stake voting "Yes," 1.05% "No," and 0.69% abstaining, based on a 52% participation rate. This approval marks one of the most significant technical evolutions in Solana’s history, positioning it as a direct competitor to traditional financial systems such as Visa and Mastercard in terms of processing speed.

At the heart of Alpenglow is a new consensus framework that replaces Solana’s existing Proof-of-History (PoH) and TowerBFT systems with two novel components: Votor and Rotor. Votor functions as a direct-vote protocol, enabling validators to confirm or skip blocks off-chain, with proofs submitted on-chain to achieve sub-second finality. Rotor, introduced for a later rollout, aims to streamline block propagation by reducing data transfers between validators, an improvement critical for applications like high-frequency DeFi and gaming. The upgrade is expected to deliver near-instant transaction confirmations, a key requirement for real-time financial and institutional use cases.

Alpenglow also introduces a restructured validator economics model. Vote transactions will move off-chain, and a fixed Validator Admission Ticket (VAT) of 1.6 SOL per epoch will be introduced, with the proceeds burned to counteract SOL inflation. The design includes safeguards such as penalties for validators who abstain or submit contradictory votes, ensuring alignment with the network’s performance goals. Additionally, the upgrade targets a "20+20" resilience envelope, allowing the network to maintain safety and liveness even if up to 20% of the stake is adversarial and an additional 20% is offline.

The governance process for Alpenglow followed a structured timeline, including discussions in epochs 833–838, stake weight capturing in epoch 839, and voting in epochs 840–842. The proposal passed with a two-thirds majority, meeting the required quorum. With the vote concluded, the focus now shifts to engineering execution, as the upgrade moves from governance to implementation. While testnet and mainnet trials will determine the long-term viability of the 150 ms finality target, the overwhelming community support reflects the ecosystem’s commitment to real-time blockchain capabilities.

The potential implications for Solana’s ecosystem are profound. By achieving Visa- and Mastercard-level settlement speeds, the network is set to enhance its appeal for global payments, decentralized finance, and other high-throughput applications. Developers and validators view Alpenglow as a pivotal step toward making Solana a scalable, resilient infrastructure that can meet the demands of both institutional and consumer-grade services. As the network transitions into its implementation phase, the broader crypto market will be watching closely for signs of increased adoption and performance.

Source:

[1] Solana’s Alpenglow Upgrade Secures 99% Approval To Slash Block Finality to 150ms (https://www.ccn.com/news/crypto/solanas-alpenglow-voting-phase-150ms-finality/)

[2] Solana Price Prediction After Alpenglow Upgrade (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/solana-price-prediction-alpenglow-upgrade-093845407.html)

[3] The Protocol: Solana Community Approves Alpenglow Upgrade (https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2025/09/03/the-protocol-solana-community-approves-alpenglow-upgrade)

[4] Solana Greenlights Alpenglow, Its Most Explosive Upgrade (https://bitcoinist.com/solana-greenlights-alpenglow/)