Solana developers voted overwhelmingly this week to adopt a significant upgrade aimed at speeding up transaction confirmations on the layer-1 blockchain.
The community governance process for SIMD-0326: Alpenglow is complete. The proposal has passed:
— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) September 2, 2025
98.27% voted Yes
1.05% voted No
0.69% voted Abstain
52% of stake cast a vote
The improvement, titled SIMD‑0236, introduces Alpenglow, a redesigned consensus protocol created by research firm Anza. According to voting tallies on Tuesday, 98% of participating validators supported the proposal, paving the way for one of the network’s largest technical overhauls to date.
Faster Confirmations for Users and Exchanges
Anza’s lead economist, Max Resnick, said users can expect to notice the changes immediately.
“The biggest difference users will feel right away will be a reduction in confirmation latency to approximately 150–200 milliseconds,” Resnick explained.
Currently, confirmations average around one second, meaning the new protocol promises a five‑fold improvement.
The changes are expected to benefit not only decentralized applications but also centralized exchanges, which today wait nearly 13 seconds for deposits to fully settle.
“Apps are going to feel a lot snappier and exchanges will be able to safely credit deposits much faster,” Resnick added.
Alpenglow’s Role in Solana’s Roadmap
First introduced in May, Alpenglow reconfigures Solana’s consensus design. The proposal described it as a “major overhaul of Solana’s core consensus protocol” built with modern infrastructure principles of performance, resilience, and simplicity.
The rollout is scheduled to begin on testnet by December, coinciding with the Solana Breakpoint conference. A mainnet launch is currently targeted for the first quarter of 2026.
Our validator voted YES on Alpenglow (SIMD-0326) as soon as voting opened.
— QuickNode (@QuickNode) September 1, 2025
Alpenglow is a major shift for @Solana, adding modern consensus for 100-150ms finality (vs. current 12.8s).
While details evolve, it's the right path to fix bottlenecks and match Web2 banking speeds.
Calling it the “most significant rewrite of the Solana protocol to date,” Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital, said the vote marks a turning point.
“Its passage today paves the way for faster processing and finality, and for internet capital markets to emerge,” he noted.
Samani added that developer determination has been central to Solana’s progress:
“One of the most important attributes of Solana’s success is the community’s pursuit of performance and their ability to push distributed computing to the limits of physics. Alpenglow will be an important milestone on our way to one million transactions per second.”
Broader Performance Goals and Market Impact
Alpenglow is part of a broader series of upgrades expected over the coming years, all intended to position Solana as a leading platform for digital financial markets. The network has already recorded throughput of over 100,000 transactions per second during recent developer tests.
Early analyst reactions have been optimistic. Some suggest that successful implementation could lift Solana’s token (SOL) as high as $250 by year’s end, though the network’s price still trails its all‑time high.
Gunel Ismayilova
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