A community test cluster begins running Alpenglow consensus

Solana/Alpenglow consensus

A community-run test cluster began running Alpenglow, Solana's new consensus protocol, in May 2026, running it for more than four months with repeated migration rehearsals before the public testnet switched over in September. Alpenglow aims to cut finality from about 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds.

• Alpenglow replaces TowerBFT; validators send votes off-chain, aggregate into certificates for one-round finality at 80% stake threshold
• Public testnet transitioned September 24, 2026; client software Agave 4.3 entered staged mainnet adoption
• Target finality of about 150 milliseconds versus TowerBFT's 32 slots (~12.8 seconds), enabling competition with Web2 payment systems