Solana’s governance process is currently on the verge of updating it to Alpenglow (SIMD-0326), a critical consensus protocol overhaul. According to the proposal, block finality will be reduced from the current 12-8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds using the new system. At least two-thirds of YES votes are related to YES Plus, but a NO vote is required for the proposal to pass, and the vote is set to Epoch 840-842 (network is currently located at Epoch 834).
Alpenglow System Introduction
Solana’s historical proof and TowerBft system will be replaced by Alpenglow, a modern framework that emphasizes fault resistance, reduced latency and streamlined consensus logic. The main component, Voting, is a simple voting system that completes a block in one or two rounds, depending on the network conditions.
By eliminating excessive gossip traffic linked to TowerBft, this method reduces bandwidth consumption and provides faster block checking. A direct vote between validators is made and the results are certified by combining encrypted proofs.
Ultimately, the complementary protocol, rotors, will replace the turbine due to data distribution, but this will be introduced in another upgrade. TowerBft’s limitations, which introduce high latency and lack formal safety guarantees, are the driving force behind Alpenglow.
What does the new system offer?
This new system provides better incentives for validators, reducing communication overhead and improving economic equity. All of these are based on recent research into distributed systems. Even if a valid 20% engages in malicious behavior and another 20% choose not to participate, the protocol will continue to work thanks to the 20+20 resilience model.
Off-chain voting aggregation is used by variators in place of on-chain voting transactions. This saves you on fees and calculation costs. The new Validator Admission Ticket (VAT) is set to 1.6 SOL per epoch.
