Solana is preparing for Alpenglow, a consensus upgrade targeting sub-second finality through replacement of Tower BFT and Proof of History protocols. The network's on-chain trading volume reached $1.6 trillion in 2025, overtaking all exchanges except Binance.
What Happened: Consensus Overhaul
Delphi Digital disclosed the upgrade will introduce two protocol components in an X post.
Votor will replace Tower BFT's incremental voting rounds with a lightweight vote aggregation model, allowing validators to aggregate votes off-chain before committing finality.
Blocks will finalize in one or two confirmation rounds rather than multiple chained rounds, reducing theoretical finality to 100-150 milliseconds from the current 12.8 seconds.
Votor operates through two concurrent finalization paths.
Fast Finalization triggers when a proposed block gains 80% or more of total stake approval in the first round and instantly finalizes, while Slow Finalization activates when the first round reaches 60% to 80%, requiring a second round exceeding 60% before finalization.
The other upgrade is Rotor which will redesign the block propagation layer, introducing stake-weighted relay paths that prioritize bandwidth-efficient propagation.
High-stakes validators with reliable bandwidth will become key relay points, replacing the original Turbine gossip network's multihop relays with variable latency, allowing block propagation to occur in as low as 18 milliseconds under typical bandwidth conditions in simulations.
Initial activation is anticipated in early to mid-2026.
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Why It Matters: Market Dominance
Solana on-chain spot volume surged from 1% of total volume to 12% since 2022. The network surpassed Bybit, Coinbase Global and Bitget in total trading volume in 2025, while Binance's share declined from 80% to 55% since 2022.
The upgrade addresses stability, validator performance and scalability concerns that have drawn criticism despite the network's speed and low fees.
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