An Oct. 20 snapshot identified 151 validators holding 20.3% of staked Solana (SOL) as unready for Alpenglow, raising the risk of missed participation if operators do not finish preparing for the network change.
Pumpkin’s Pool’s tracker supplied the Oct. 20 tally. Readiness may improve before the deadline as validators update their systems and accounts. The snapshot alone cannot show how much stake, if any, will be unable to participate at the scheduled handoff.
The Solana Foundation estimates epoch 1064 will begin around 9:20 a.m. ET (13:20 UTC) Oct. 21, when validators must already be ready. Its plan keeps TowerBFT in place for another 5,000 slots before Alpenglow takes over at slot 459,653,000. The start time may move with the network’s pace. The change follows earlier preparations outlined to validators.
To qualify, operators must register a BLS public key, keep at least 0.8 SOL beyond the vote account’s rent-exempt balance and run an Agave-based client updated to version 4.3.2. A validator without the key is already barred from consensus. Software, registration and account funding are separate requirements before the epoch opens.
The foundation says the recurring 0.8 SOL admission charge replaces vote-transaction fees. The first payment is assessed when epoch 1064 begins and covers participation in epoch 1065. An account that cannot cover the charge leaves its validator unable to vote or produce blocks in the following epoch, with no rewards for that period.
Alpenglow would shift voting from TowerBFT’s on-chain process to direct exchanges among validators. The foundation’s goal is transaction finality of about 150 milliseconds, against roughly 12.8 seconds under the current system. The faster figure describes the intended result on mainnet; the switch has not yet produced a measured outcome.
The next marker is a genesis certificate at slot 459,653,000, which the foundation identifies as the signal that the consensus handoff has occurred.
