Delphi Digital: Solana is gearing up for the Alpenglow upgrade, Theoretical Confirmation Time Reduced by 100x

BlockBeats News, January 4th, Delphi Digital posted on X platform stating that Solana is preparing for a major upgrade called Alpenglow. This upgrade is 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 Tower BFT's incremental voting rounds with a lightweight voting aggregation model. Validators can participate in off-chain aggregated voting before submitting final confirmations, allowing blocks to achieve finality in 1 to 2 confirmation rounds. This improvement reduces theoretical finality latency to 100 to 150 milliseconds, roughly 100 times shorter than the original 12.8 seconds. Votor achieves finality through two parallel paths: fast finality is triggered and immediately effective when a proposed block receives over 80% of total stake weight support in the first round; slow finality is triggered with support rates between 60% and 80%, requiring a second round vote exceeding 60% to finalize.

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