Sep 26, 2026, 1:00 a.m. EDT
2 min read
Summary
- Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade, which aims to cut transaction settlement time to about 150 milliseconds from 12.8 seconds, is now active on its devnet and testnet.
- The upgrade changes how validators reach agreement and will remove validator votes from blocks, reducing reported transaction totals even if user activity remains unchanged.
- Alpenglow’s mainnet launch has not been scheduled, and its speed target has yet to be sustained under live-market conditions.
Solana’s planned upgrade to make payments final in a fraction of a second has reached its public developer network, giving application teams a place to test before it reaches the blockchain carrying real money.
Called Alpenglow, the upgrade targets roughly 150 milliseconds for finality, the point at which a transaction can no longer be reversed, compared with about 12.8 seconds under the existing system.
That could shorten the wait for an exchange to release deposited funds or a payment app to tell a merchant a sale is complete.
Anza, the company building Solana’s core software, announced the developer-network switch on Sept. 25, a day after the separate testnet completed its transition. The Solana Foundation’s upgrade page lists Alpenglow as active on both networks.
Developers use the developer network, or devnet, to check applications with tokens that have no real value. The separate testnet is used primarily to stress-test network software and validator operations.
Read More: Solana starts testing upgrade that could cut finality from 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds
Alpenglow changes how validators, the computers that check transactions, agree on the network’s records. They will exchange votes directly instead of recording those votes as transactions inside blocks, the batches of transactions added to the blockchain. Agreement can then take one or two voting rounds.
Removing those votes will also make some Solana activity charts fall. Transaction totals that include validator votes will shrink even if users make just as many payments and trades. The Foundation has told data providers to adjust their comparisons.
Services that build transaction histories also need to keep competing candidate blocks separate until the network selects one. Mixing their contents could produce an incorrect record.
Applications that simply send transactions and read account balances require no migration, according to the Foundation’s guide.
The speed figure remains a target derived from simulations, rather than a demonstrated result under live-market conditions. Wallet processing and exchanges’ own deposit checks can add further waiting time.
No firm launch date has been announced for the live network. Anza’s software schedule tentatively allows feature activations to resume Sept. 28, but does not identify that date as Alpenglow’s launch.
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The Definitive Stablecoin Landscape Series: Asia Pacific
The Definitive Stablecoin Landscape Series: Asia Pacific
As stablecoins move into regulated finance, APAC is becoming a key proving ground. This report maps the region’s rules, use cases, and RLUSD’s role.
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As stablecoins move into regulated finance, APAC is becoming a key proving ground. This report maps the region’s rules, use cases, and RLUSD’s role.
Why it matters:
As stablecoins move into regulated finance, APAC is becoming a key proving ground. This report maps the region’s rules, use cases, and RLUSD’s role.