Solana's Alpenglow upgrade has entered the public testnet, where developers will test reducing transaction finality from about 13 seconds to 0.15 seconds, or 150 milliseconds. According to ChainCatcher, the upgrade will replace Solana's current TowerBFT consensus system with Votor, allowing validators to confirm blocks through one or two rounds of direct voting while the way users send funds remains unchanged.

The first testnet migration requires Agave 4.3 and does not yet support Firedancer or Frankendancer. The planned mainnet update on September 28 remains tentative and is not a confirmed launch date for Alpenglow.