Alpenglow activation completes on Solana devnet

Solana/Alpenglow consensus

A day after the public testnet, Solana's devnet also switched to Alpenglow consensus on 25 September 2026. Its first phase, Votor, has validators send votes directly to each other so a block can be finalised in one or two voting rounds, targeting about 150 ms instead of about 12.8 seconds. Mainnet still runs TowerBFT and has no confirmed activation date.

• One round finalises a block if validators holding at least 80% of stake accept it; a second round is the fallback when the first falls short.
• Ordinary apps that send transactions and read balances need no changes.
• Block-data services must adapt: handle competing candidate blocks, stop counting vote transactions (they leave the blocks), and read validator participation from new certificates.
• A second phase, Rotor, will later change how blocks are spread across the network.
• The 150 ms figure comes from tests and simulations, not live market conditions.