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TheTechno Optimist.

Alpenglow consensusSolana—Alpenglow consensusSolana—Alpenglow consensusSolana—Solana mainnet & FiredancerSolana—Solana—

Solana

Fast L1 blockchain, Firedancer, Alpenglow

US/CHprivateest. 2018solana.com (opens solana.com)Checked 25 Sep

The brief

Analyst view
  • Jump Crypto's Firedancer client went live in Dec 2025, so Solana no longer depends on one software client.
  • Validators approved the Alpenglow rewrite in Sept 2025. It's expected to go live with client v4.3.
  • Multi-hour outages in 2021-2022 and Feb 2024 drove investment in a second client and networking fixes.

Technical approach

As reported
Clock

Proof of History

A chain of hashes acts as a clock. Each step depends on the last, proving time passed and ordering events without a vote.

Execution

Parallel runtime (Sealevel)

Transactions say up front which accounts they touch, so ones that don't overlap run on many cores at once.

Propagation

Turbine block sharing

Leaders cut blocks into small pieces and pass them down a tree of validators, so no node must send a full block to everyone.

Consensus

Alpenglow

New voting: a block is final after one round if 80% of stake votes, or two rounds at 60%. Block data is relayed in one hop.

Programs

Solana, two programs

Updated 15d ago
Alpenglow consensusA full replacement for how Solana's validators agree on blocks. It aims to make blocks final in about 100-150 ms instead of ~12.8 s.PilotNextTestnet deployment and client integration · 2026Updated 15d agoView program →Solana mainnet & FiredancerThe Solana network and the software validators run. Firedancer, built from scratch in C/C++ by Jump Crypto, aims for more speed and a second independent client.ScalingUpdated 1 Dec 2025View program →
Research · Proto · Pilot · Deploy · Scaling

Research & demos

2 items

Open technical problems

Open · Active · Partial
  • Hardware demandsOpen

    Running a validator needs powerful machines and fast internet, which concentrates validation among professional operators.

  • Spam when busyPartially solved

    Bursts of bot and memecoin traffic have caused dropped transactions. Local fee markets and stake-weighted priority help partly.

Peers

Blockchains (L1s) · 1

Company & funding

HQ
US/CH
Founded
2018

Partners & customers

2 partners

People

Key people
Primer