Solana is scheduled to turn on Alpenglow on Wednesday, replacing the network voting system it has relied on since 2020. The change is set to take effect at the start of epoch 1064, marking the chain’s biggest core overhaul in years.
The upgrade is designed to move voting activity off-chain and use certificates to finalize transactions in one or two rounds. According to the project’s target, that could bring transaction finality down to about 150 milliseconds if the system performs as expected on mainnet.
How Alpenglow changes Solana’s voting process
Under the current setup, validators cast votes on-chain. Alpenglow removes that process from the chain itself and instead groups votes into certificates intended to lock in a transaction quickly.
The new design aims to finalize transactions in one or two rounds. If the roughly 150-millisecond goal holds after the mainnet launch, Solana transactions would be considered settled in a fraction of a second.
Lower ongoing costs for validators
The shift also changes how validators pay to participate. At present, validators spend about 2 SOL per day on vote fees under the existing system.
Alpenglow eliminates those recurring vote fees and replaces them with a flat validator admission ticket priced at 0.8 SOL per epoch. Based on the figures outlined for the rollout, that would make the cost roughly 60% lower.
A testing process that included setbacks
The path to launch was not straightforward. Since the testnet opened in early May, the network was wiped and restarted from scratch six times during the testing process.
One attempt to migrate the system failed across the network and had to be rolled back. A later migration succeeded, which cleared the way for the planned production launch on Wednesday.
When the switch is expected to happen
The activation is scheduled for the beginning of epoch 1064. The actual protocol change is set to occur at slot 459,653,000 after a 5,000-slot transition period.
That timeline is the next confirmed step for the rollout. The key question after activation will be whether Alpenglow can meet its stated finality target on mainnet after a test cycle that included multiple resets and at least one failed migration.
Source: www.coindesk.com