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Solana Targets Near-Instant Finality as Alpenglow Upgrade Heads to Vote
Alpenglow also introduces a “20+20” resilience model, which promises to keep the chain running even if 20% of validators are adversarial and another 20% are offline.
Updated Aug 28, 2025, 10:34 a.m. Published Aug 28, 2025, 10:11 a.m.
What to know:
- Solana developers are proposing a major consensus overhaul with the Alpenglow proposal, currently in the validator voting stage.
- The new design aims to replace Proof-of-History and TowerBFT with Votor and Rotor, promising faster transaction finalization and improved network efficiency.
- Alpenglow introduces a resilience model to maintain operations even if 20% of validators are adversarial and another 20% are offline.
Solana developers are pushing a major consensus overhaul with the Alpenglow proposal, now in the validator voting stage.
Just over 10% of validators have backed the upgrade as of European morning hours on Thursday, a tracker shows, with over 88% of eligible participants yet to cast their choice.
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If passed, it would replace Proof-of-History and TowerBFT with a faster, more resilient design centered on two new components: Votor and Rotor.
Proof of history is Solana’s existing consensus mechanism. It timestamps transactions, allowing validators to determine the correct order without wasting time on syncing (which creates a slower network). TowerBFT is the network’s voting system. Validators use previous votes as a guide, helping them quickly agree on the next block while resisting attacks.
The big draw in the new consensus proposal Votor, which would cut the time it takes for a transaction to be finalized from more than 12 seconds to around 150 milliseconds, making network confirmations feel effectively instant for users.
Rotor, planned for a later stage, aims to make the network more efficient by reducing the number of times data needs to be transferred between validators — an upgrade designed to support high-activity applications, such as DeFi and gaming.
Alpenglow also introduces a “20+20” resilience model, which promises to keep the chain running even if 20% of validators are adversarial and another 20% are offline.
The proposal frames this as a step toward achieving faster speeds while enhancing security and fairness for validators.
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