Delphi Digital: Solana's major upgrade Alpenglow is planned to launch in 2026, with theoretical confirmation latency reduced by up to 100 times

According to Odaily, Delphi Digital posted on X 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 the incremental voting rounds of Tower BFT with a lightweight vote aggregation model. Validators can aggregate votes off-chain before submitting final confirmation, allowing blocks to achieve finality within 1 to 2 confirmation rounds. This improvement reduces theoretical finality latency to 100 to 150 milliseconds, about 100 times faster than the original 12.8 seconds. Votor achieves final confirmation through two parallel paths: when a proposed block receives over 80% of total staked weight support in the first round, it triggers fast confirmation and takes effect immediately; if the first-round support rate is between 60% and 80%, it triggers slow confirmation, requiring a second-round vote exceeding 60% to achieve finality.

Rotor restructures Solana's block propagation layer. The original Turbine propagation network relied on multi-hop relays with variable latency, while Rotor introduces staked-weight relay paths that prioritize bandwidth efficiency. Validators with high stake and reliable bandwidth will serve as core relay points. Simulations show that under typical bandwidth conditions, block propagation can be completed in as little as 18 milliseconds. This upgrade is expected to be rolled out gradually, with an initial launch estimated between early and mid-2026.