BlockBeats news, on January 4th, Delphi Digital stated on platform 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, adopting a lightweight voting aggregation model. Validators can aggregate votes off-chain before submitting final confirmations, allowing blocks to achieve finality in 1 to 2 confirmation rounds. This improvement reduces theoretical finality latency to 100 to 150 milliseconds, shortening it by approximately 100 times from the initial 12.8 seconds. Votor achieves final confirmation through two parallel paths: when the proposed block receives over 80% of the total staked weight support in the first round, it triggers rapid confirmation and takes effect immediately; if the support rate in the first round is between 60% and 80%, it triggers slow confirmation, requiring the second round of voting to exceed 60% to complete final confirmation.
Rotor has restructured the block propagation layer of Solana. The original Turbine propagation network relied on multi-hop relays with variable delays, while Rotor introduces staked-weight relay paths that prioritize bandwidth efficiency. Validators with high stakes and reliable bandwidth will become core relay points. Simulation data shows that under typical bandwidth conditions, block propagation can be completed in as fast as 18 milliseconds. This upgrade is expected to be rolled out gradually, with an initial launch timeframe anticipated between early to mid-2026.
