Key points
- Solana plans to implement the Alpenglow consensus upgrade on October 21.
- After validator voting transactions disappear, the reported TPS may drop significantly.
- The final confirmation time target has been reduced from 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds.
Solana may see a noticeable drop in reported trading volume on October 21, despite one of the network’s most significant upgrades promising to significantly accelerate payment settlement speeds.
The blockchain is preparing to activate Alpenglow, a new consensus system designed to reduce transaction finality time to approximately 150 milliseconds, down from the current 12.8 seconds. However, this upgrade will also remove validator vote transactions from blocks, which may cause a reported drop in network activity metrics—though this does not reflect any actual decline in user demand.
According to the Solana Foundation, this transition is scheduled for epoch 1064 and is expected to begin around 15:00 UTC on Wednesday, October 21.
Why might Solana's transaction volume suddenly decrease?
Solana currently uses TowerBFT, a consensus mechanism that requires validators to submit on-chain vote transactions to confirm blocks.
These votes are counted toward the blockchain's total transaction volume, even though they do not represent regular payments, decentralized exchange trades, or user interactions.
Alpenglow will replace this process with Votor, allowing validators to directly exchange votes and consolidate approvals into cryptographic certificates.
Solana Compass estimates that between October 10 and 12, validator votes accounted for approximately 63% of transaction activity, averaging about 3,060 votes per second, compared to user transactions at approximately 1,780 per second.
If this ratio remains unchanged, removing voting transactions may cause the reported TPS to appear significantly lower immediately after the upgrade takes effect.
This will complicate comparisons with previous data, including periods when Solana was reported to dominate blockchain transaction activity.
At the same time, this will make non-voting transactions a more useful indicator of actual network demand.
Alpenglow aims for 150 milliseconds finality.
The larger goal of this upgrade is to change the time required for trades to become irreversible.
Under TowerBFT, final confirmation typically takes about 12.8 seconds. Alpenglow aims for approximately 150 milliseconds, representing an improvement of about 98.8%, though actual performance will depend on network conditions.
For payment applications and cross-chain infrastructure, shorter finality times reduce the wait time before a transaction is considered settled.
This change continues Solana’s broader efforts to improve its infrastructure, including prior work addressing network bottlenecks and the development of alternative validator software.
However, Alpenglow initially introduced only Votor. Rotor is another planned improvement for block data distribution, and no confirmed activation date has been set yet.
This distinction is also important when comparing Solana to other fast-finality blockchains, as confirmation speed and transaction throughput measure different aspects of performance.
The validator economy and infrastructure will change.
This transition requires validator operators to run compatible software based on Agave 4.3.0. Firedancer and Frankendancer operators must temporarily switch to supported clients during the migration.
This upgrade will also replace the standard voting transaction fee with a validator admission fee of 0.8 SOL per epoch.
According to the foundation, the existing consensus mechanism will continue to operate for approximately 5,000 slots after the target epoch begins, before Alpenglow takes over.
Developers operating block explorers and analytics platforms must also account for the possibility of voting transactions disappearing, to avoid misinterpreting network activity.
Alpenglow has appeared in SOL's market analysis, but faster finality does not automatically imply a bullish price outcome.
For investors, this timing coincides with broader cryptocurrency selling pressure facing Solana.
Elara Voss
A journalist covering cryptocurrency markets, blockchain innovation, and global digital asset regulation. She has a background in financial research and technology reporting, with a focus on market volatility, emerging protocols, institutional adoption, and the evolving role of cryptocurrency in the global economy.