Solana has scheduled Alpenglow, a major consensus upgrade, to begin activation on mainnet during epoch 1064 on October 21, at approximately 13:20 UTC. The transition replaces TowerBFT’s on-chain validator voting with a certificate-based voting system designed to reduce transaction finality to roughly 150 milliseconds. The Solana Foundation compares that target with a previous finality baseline of about 12.8 seconds.
The transition will occur over several thousand slots rather than instantly at the start of the epoch. Validator operators must use compatible software and satisfy new voting requirements, while ordinary $SOL wallet holders are not expected to take action.
The 150-millisecond figure is a protocol target, not a measured result from the new mainnet configuration. At the time of this update, activation was still scheduled and had not been independently confirmed complete.
The transition will occur over several thousand slots rather than instantly at the start of the epoch. Validator operators must use compatible software and satisfy new voting requirements, while ordinary $SOL wallet holders are not expected to take action.
The 150-millisecond figure is a protocol target, not a measured result from the new mainnet configuration. At the time of this update, activation was still scheduled and had not been independently confirmed complete.