A new consensus proposal, Alpenglow (SIMD-0326), has been put into a community vote at the Solana Ecosystem. This proposal aims to reduce block finality over the network from the current 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds.
Voting will be held between Epoch 840 and 420. Each epoch currently lasts for about two days with Epoch 834. The proposal must receive at least 66% of votes voted in favor of “Yes.”
The Solana executive announcement described Alpenglow as a modern architecture that prioritizes performance, durability, and simplicity, replacing existing historical proofs and TowerBft mechanisms.
The person at the heart of the new protocol offers a lightweight framework based on in-person voting. Blocks are finalized using single or double rounds of votes, depending on network conditions. This reduces the block confirmation time from 12.8 seconds to 100-150 milliseconds. It also eliminates massive amounts of gossip traffic and increases bandwidth efficiency.
Additionally, a new data propagation protocol called rotors will be introduced in future updates. The current phase only covers finalization and voting logic.
*This is not investment advice.
