Solana Activates Its Biggest Upgrade Ever, Promising Near-Instant Transactions

Solana activated Alpenglow on Wednesday (21), one of the biggest upgrades in its history, promising to make transactions on the blockchain practically instantaneous. The change reduces the time needed for a transaction to be considered final from roughly 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds, a reduction of nearly 99%.

The upgrade went live at around 11am (Brasília time), when the network's validators replaced the old consensus system, called TowerBFT, with the new Alpenglow protocol. The change was confirmed by Anza, the company responsible for developing the technology.

According to the team, the transition took place without the need to halt the blockchain or restart the transaction history. The new system began operating at block number 459,653,000.

The upgrade represents the biggest change to Solana's validation infrastructure since the network launched in March 2020. Its goal is to make the blockchain faster and more competitive for financial applications, particularly payments, asset trading and operations involving tokenised products.

"This is the biggest and most ambitious blockchain upgrade since The Merge, and Anza took it from a technical paper to mainnet in under 18 months," said Brennan Watt, CEO of Anza, to Decrypt.

The reference is to the upgrade carried out by Ethereum in 2022, when the second-largest blockchain in the market abandoned traditional mining and moved to a staking-based validation mechanism.

In Solana's case, the main change concerns how the computers responsible for running the network, known as validators, reach agreement on which transactions are legitimate.

Until now, those computers had to record their votes on the blockchain itself, which increased the time needed for a transaction to be considered final.

With Alpenglow, votes are now sent directly between validators, without needing to wait for them to be recorded in new blocks.

The new mechanism allows a transaction to be finalised in a single round when it receives the backing of at least 80% of the stake involved in validation. In other situations, the system uses a second round of voting.

In practice, this means an exchange will be able to recognise receipt of a cryptocurrency transfer almost immediately, while companies will be able to settle payments and digital asset trades with less waiting time.

It is worth stressing that the change relates mainly to transaction finality — that is, the point at which transactions can no longer be reversed — and not necessarily to a 99% increase in the network's processing capacity.

For ordinary users, there is no need to update wallets or carry out any additional procedure. The change took place at the blockchain's infrastructure level, with applications continuing to work as usual.

Upgrade was approved by more than 98% of validators

Alpenglow began development in 2025 and was approved by Solana's validators in September of that year, with support from more than 98% of recorded votes.

Before reaching mainnet, the protocol went through various testing stages, including attack simulations, security assessments and migration procedures.

According to CoinDesk, the testing also involved setbacks, including a migration attempt that had to be rolled back before being carried out successfully on a second try.

Anza says the new system was designed to keep functioning even in periods of instability.

The protocol was designed to tolerate up to 20% of malicious stake on the network, plus a further 20% temporarily offline.

The upgrade may also reduce validators' operating costs, since it removes the need to continuously record their votes on the blockchain.

Alpenglow, however, is not yet fully complete. The stage activated on Wednesday corresponds to Votor, the component responsible for the voting and transaction-confirmation process.

A second phase, called Rotor, is expected to replace the system used to distribute information about new blocks among validators, but it does not yet have a launch date.

Developers are also studying further improvements, including changes to the geographic distribution of validators and a proposal called Quantumglow, intended to make the protocol resistant to potential quantum-computing attacks.

These initiatives are still under development and are not part of the upgrade put into operation on Wednesday.

Analyst sees 32% upside potential for Solana

Alpenglow's arrival also comes at a time of positive expectations for the SOL cryptocurrency, used to pay fees and take part in the network's security mechanism.

Last week, Pedro Fontes, research analyst at Mercado Bitcoin, pointed to upside potential of approximately 32% for Solana, based on an entry region near US$106.

According to the analyst, the cryptocurrency combines three favourable factors: the progress of asset tokenisation, the rollout of Alpenglow, and a chart setup that could open room for further gains.

The analyst set a target of US$140 for SOL, with a defensive exit point at US$95 should the market deteriorate.

In Fontes's assessment, the upgrade could strengthen Solana's use in financial applications that require speed and security, particularly in trading traditional assets represented digitally on blockchain.

One expanding segment is tokenised equities, which allow digital representations of company shares to be traded through blockchain networks.

According to data compiled by MB, Solana handled approximately US$8.8 billion in tokenised equity trading in the second quarter of 2026, growth of about 325% compared with the previous quarter. Part of this activity took place through platforms such as Raydium and Jupiter, which run on Solana's infrastructure.

Institutional interest is also growing. JPMorgan, for instance, has already taken part in initiatives involving the circulation and settlement of tokenised assets on the network.

For Fontes, the reduction in transaction confirmation times could increase Solana's competitiveness against other blockchains and traditional financial systems.

The upside projection, however, depends on overall market conditions and is not a guarantee of price appreciation.

On Wednesday morning, before Alpenglow went live, SOL was trading around US$107, in line with the recovery seen across major cryptocurrencies.

The rollout of the upgrade represents a technological step forward for Solana, but its impact on network usage and on the cryptocurrency's price will depend on adoption of the improvements by developers, businesses and investors in the coming months.

If you want to invest in cryptocurrencies securely, Mercado Bitcoin offers a special benefit to our readers: use the code PORTAL250 when signing up and get 8 EUR in Bitcoin as a bonus when you buy 42 EUR worth of assets. Click here to open your account.