Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade entered public testnet, aiming to cut transaction finality from about 13 seconds to 0. 15 seconds, with a tentative Sept 28 mainnet rollout that remains unconfirmed.
Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade has moved to the network’s public testnet, where developers will test reducing transaction finality from roughly 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds. The upgrade replaces Solana’s TowerBFT consensus with a voting protocol called Votor, allowing validators to finalize blocks after one or two rounds of direct voting without requiring changes to wallets or fund‑sending methods.
The testnet migration runs on Agave 4.3, the primary software for running Solana, and does not include the Firedancer or Frankendancer clients. Anza, a company developing the network, recommended Agave 4.3 to all mainnet validators on Sept. 21 after phased rollouts to operators handling 10 % and then 25 % of the SOL stake. The public testnet switch itself was listed as pending early Wednesday.
A Sept. 28 date appears in Anza’s schedule as a tentative point for enabling features included in Agave 4.3 on the main network, but the source notes this is not a confirmed Alpenglow launch date, leaving the mainnet rollout timing uncertain.