The Alpenglow consensus protocol on the Solana network has been launched on the mainnet beta, replacing TowerBFT at slot 459,653,000. The new protocol reduces the time required for a transaction to become irreversible from approximately 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds. This is significant for exchanges, banks, and merchants, reports the Anza development team.
The update, the largest since the network's launch in 2020, took place on Wednesday. Validators agreed to transition from TowerBFT, which had been in use since March 2020, switched systems on the live network, and moved the existing ledger forward. Brennan Watt, CEO of Anza, called it "the largest and most ambitious blockchain upgrade since The Merge"—Ethereum's transition to proof-of-stake in 2022—and noted that Anza carried it from White Paper to mainnet operation in less than 18 months.
This concerns finality—the moment when a transaction can no longer be reversed and when an exchange, bank, or merchant considers the asset moved. Under TowerBFT, Solana provided conditional confirmation in seconds but achieved full finality in approximately 12.8 seconds. Alpenglow combines the two steps into one.
Before going live on the mainnet, the protocol underwent public testing, including red teaming, penetration tests, multiple migration rehearsals, and a security competition, followed by launches on Solana's test and development networks. Anza implemented the protocol in Agave, its validator-supporting software, and it was activated by independent operators.
Further updates are planned. Rotor will change the way block data is propagated across the network, and geographically aware leader rotation is intended to reduce delays in block production handoffs between validators. Quantumglow is a research design: it will replace Alpenglow's elliptic cryptography with hash-based signatures to protect against quantum computers while maintaining the same finality speed. None of these updates have a set date.
Max Reznik, Anza's chief economist, told Decrypt back in September: "The most noticeable change users will feel immediately is the reduction in confirmation latency to about 150–200 milliseconds."
This material is prepared solely for informational purposes and does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation.
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