Delphi Digital: Solana's Major Upgrade Alpenglow Set to Launch in 2026, Theoretical Confirmation Latency Could Be Reduced by 100x

Odaily News Delphi Digital posted on the X platform stating that Solana is preparing for a major upgrade called Alpenglow. This upgrade represents a complete overhaul of the consensus mechanism, aiming to achieve sub-second finality by replacing Tower BFT and Proof of History (PoH). Alpenglow introduces two new protocol components: Votor and Rotor.

Votor replaces the incremental voting rounds of Tower BFT with a lightweight vote aggregation model. Validators can aggregate votes off-chain before submitting final confirmation, allowing blocks to achieve finality within 1 to 2 confirmation rounds. This improvement reduces the theoretical finality latency to 100-150 milliseconds, approximately 100 times faster than the original 12.8 seconds. Votor achieves finality through two parallel paths: fast confirmation is triggered and takes effect immediately when a proposed block receives support from over 80% of the total staked weight in the first round; if the first-round support is between 60% and 80%, a slow confirmation is triggered, requiring a second-round vote exceeding 60% to complete finality.

Rotor restructures Solana's block propagation layer. The original Turbine propagation network relied on multi-hop relays with variable latency, whereas Rotor introduces staked-weight relay paths that prioritize bandwidth efficiency. Validators with high stake and reliable bandwidth will become core relay points. Simulation data shows that under typical bandwidth conditions, block propagation can be completed in as fast as 18 milliseconds. This upgrade is expected to be rolled out gradually, with an initial launch timeframe estimated for early to mid-2026.