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Solana’s 150-millisecond settlement upgrade reaches second public test network
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- DeepHorus
Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade is now active on its devnet and testnet, advancing a goal of roughly 150 milliseconds for transaction finality. Anza, which builds Solana’s core software, announced the devnet switch on Sept. 25, one day after the testnet transition. The Solana Foundation lists Alpenglow on both networks, but no mainnet date has been set.
Alpenglow targets a reduction in finality—the point when a transaction can no longer be reversed—from about 12.8 seconds to around 150 milliseconds. Faster settlement could let payment apps confirm sales sooner and exchanges release deposits with less delay.
The devnet lets developers test applications with tokens that have no real value. The separate testnet is used mainly to stress-test network software and validator operations. Deploying Alpenglow on both gives application teams a public venue to check compatibility before the upgrade handles real assets.
Alpenglow changes how validators, the computers that verify transactions, reach agreement. They would exchange votes directly rather than record votes as transactions inside blocks, allowing agreement in one or two voting rounds. Removing those entries will reduce reported transaction totals even if user payments and trades remain unchanged.
The Solana Foundation has asked data providers to adjust comparisons because validator votes will no longer inflate activity measures. Services that build transaction histories must also keep competing candidate blocks separate until Solana selects one, since combining their contents prematurely could produce an incorrect record. Applications that only send transactions and read balances need no migration.
The 150-millisecond figure remains a simulation-derived target, not a sustained result under live-market conditions. Wallet processing and exchange deposit checks can add further delay. Anza’s schedule tentatively allows feature activations to resume Sept. 28, but does not identify that date as Alpenglow’s launch; its mainnet rollout and real-world performance remain undecided.
