Solana’s biggest network change since 2020 is live. Here’s how users benefit

Solana switched on its Alpenglow upgrade Wednesday, introducing a new voting system designed to make payments and trades final in a fraction of a second.

The upgrade targets about 150 milliseconds before the network considers a transaction locked in, replacing the multi-second wait under its previous system. That point is called finality, when an application can treat the payment as settled.

Previously, they recorded votes as transactions on the blockchain and accumulated approvals across successive blocks.

Alpenglow lets them send votes directly to one another and combine those approvals into certificates, allowing a block to become final after one or two voting rounds.

The handover from the old system took about 900 milliseconds, according to the Solana Foundation. Votes from 446 of the network’s 654 participating validators certified the block used as the starting point — a timing that measures the switch between systems.

How this matters for users

Many Solana apps already showed a transaction as confirmed before the network had finished locking it in, which made payments feel fast while leaving a further wait for full settlement.

Alpenglow actually makes those transactions faster, giving apps a way to show users their money has arrived with stronger assurance that the payment will hold. Such a benefit is especially useful when a service needs to release funds or goods immediately after receiving payment.

An exchange could credit a deposit sooner, letting a customer trade with the funds. A shop accepting a stablecoin payment could confirm it without keeping the customer at the counter waiting for settlement.

How quickly that reaches a user’s screen also depends on the service handling the payment. Anza, the company behind Solana’s Agave software, told CoinDesk in a release that some computers receive finality information later than the validators voting directly.

The 150-millisecond figure remains a target under normal network conditions, rather than a guaranteed time for every payment.

Users can continue sending funds through their existing wallets. Transaction fees and the way applications run remain unchanged.

The speed comes from changing how validators, the computers checking transactions and agreeing on the network’s records, communicate.

Meanwhile, there is also a change readers may notice on network dashboards. Validator votes no longer appear as blockchain transactions, so services that counted them will report lower transaction totals.

A chart could therefore show a sharp drop even while users continue making just as many payments and trades. Comparisons with earlier activity need to count user transactions separately from the votes that previously filled the blocks.