Solana’s Alpenglow Goes Live, Aiming for 40x Faster Finality as Votes Move Off-Chain

Solana Alpenglow, the network’s largest consensus overhaul since its 2020 launch, went live on Wednesday, October 21, 2026. The upgrade replaces the TowerBFT consensus system and targets block finality of about 150 milliseconds, roughly 85 times faster than the previous 12.8 seconds. Anza, Solana’s core software team, confirmed activation at approximately 14:00 UTC, tied to