Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade is scheduled for Wednesday, with a consensus handoff about 18 minutes after its activation epoch begins, a change intended to shorten the time needed to finalize transactions.
The Solana Foundation estimates that epoch 1064 will start Oct. 21 at 9:20 a.m. ET (13:20 UTC). The projected clock time may change with slot timing. TowerBFT will remain in use for the first 5,000 slots before Votor, Alpenglow’s first phase, takes over.
The foundation aims to reduce transaction finality from roughly 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds, a target described in earlier EconoTimes coverage of the upgrade. Finality is the point at which the network treats a transaction as settled. The target does not specify when a wallet will display an update.
Under Votor, validators exchange votes directly and use certificates to establish finality. Validators must have compatible software and sufficient funds in their vote accounts before the epoch begins. Applications that read block data must also adjust to changes in voting and data streams. Transaction execution and fees are expected to remain the same.
The foundation identifies a genesis certificate at the planned migration slot, 459,653,000, as the next marker of the handoff.
