Solana prepares Alpenglow: Towards a transaction speed worthy of the Nasdaq

Solana provides major change: the network plans to replace its current consensus model, based on Proof-of-History and Towerbft, by a new system called Alpenglow. Presented in the SIMD-0326 governance proposal, this upgrade aims to offer faster confirmations, reinforced security and a simplified structure, positioning Solana for increased global adoption.

Solve the limits of Towerbft

Solana's team recognizes that Towerbft has generated performance challenges. In the current system, the finalization of the blocks can take more time than expected by users, resulting in perceptible delays in transactions.

Furthermore, Towerbft does not provide formal security guarantees, leaving the network without clear mathematical certainty that no conflict block can be confirmed, even in rare circumstances.

The new system promises to solve these two problems. Alpenglow is built on recent research in distributed consensus, offering faster finality time blockchain, better resilience and reinforced safety bases. It also reduces complexity while maintaining efficiency, a balance that developers aim to reach as the network extends.

Votor is the engine that feeds Alpenglow, replacing Towerbft with a direct vote. Validators can finalize the blocks in one or two laps, reducing the confirmation time of approximately 12.8 seconds at only 100 milliseconds. This gives Solana an almost instantaneous speed, closer to the experience of conventional web applications.

Next steps and governance roadmap

In addition to votor, Alpenglow will introduce another protocol called rotor. While Votor focuses on voting and finality, Rotor will manage the rapid propagation of data on the network. Rotor is not part of the first deployment but is planned as a later step once Votor is operational.

The main details of the upgrade include:

• Alpenglow is designed for resilience, tolerant up to 20 % of opposing validators and another 20 % offline.
• The governance review begins with two weeks of community discussion during eras 833 to 838.
• The era 839 will be used for the verification of stakes before the start of the voting phase.
• The vote is planned on eras 840 to 842 and requires two -thirds support to move forward.
• If approved, Alpenglow will replace Towerbft and will become the new Solana standard for confirmation of transactions.

Record transactions place Solana in front of the major scholarships

The upgrade comes while Solana recently reached a record of 35 million transactions in a single day, exceeding the combined activity of the main Tokyo, India and Hong Kong scholarships.

However, compared to the Nasdaq in the United States, the table changes. The American technological scholarship runs approximately 2,290 transactions per second, with more than $ 362 billion exchanged daily. Solana, in comparison, treats just over 400 transactions per second and has a daily value of $ 9.61 billion. The gap shows the remaining path, even if the blockchain approaches traditional finance in terms of scale.

The price of the soil decreases but the activity on the Dex remains solid

In terms of market performance, Solana's token, Sola, has had a recent decline. He dropped more than 2 % in the last 24 hours and is negotiated around $ 184.

However, activity on decentralized exchanges (DEX) built on Solana remains strong. In July, these platforms treated $ 124.2 billion in exchange volume. This figure extended Solana's advance on Ethereum, which recorded $ 87.1 billion over the same period. This also marked the tenth consecutive month when Solana maintained a volume DEX greater than its main rival. With Alpenglow on the horizon, Solana's progress reflects its efforts to evolve and compete with higher levels of finance and technology.