Solana’s Alpenglow Upgrade Hits Second Public Test Network

Solana’s upcoming Alpenglow upgrade, which aims to reduce transaction finality to roughly 150 milliseconds from the current 12.8 seconds, has been deployed on the network’s two public test environments – the developer network (devnet) and the separate testnet.

What the Upgrade Changes

Alpenglow modifies the consensus process by having validators exchange votes directly rather than embedding those votes as transactions inside blocks. This reduces the number of transactions reported on the chain and can cut the agreement process to one or two voting rounds.

Impact on Developers and Metrics

Developers can now test applications on both test networks using non‑valued tokens, while the testnet continues to serve for stress‑testing validator software. Because validator votes will no longer appear as regular transactions, on‑chain activity charts that include those votes will show lower totals even if user activity stays constant. Data providers have been asked to adjust their metrics accordingly.

Readiness and Timeline

The upgrade does not require any migration for applications that only send transactions and read balances. However, services that construct transaction histories must keep competing candidate blocks separate until final selection to avoid inaccurate records. The speed target remains based on simulations; real‑world performance under live market conditions has not yet been demonstrated. No launch date for the mainnet has been announced, though the software schedule allows for feature activations to resume around September 28.

Next Steps

Application teams are encouraged to run their software on the devnet and testnet to verify compatibility before the upgrade reaches the live blockchain that handles real assets.