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On a blockchain, “sent” and “settled” aren’t the same thing. For six years, Solana users waited about 12.8 seconds for the second one. As of October 21, Anza says that wait is down to about 150 milliseconds.
<a href="https://www.anza.xyz/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Anza</a>, a core engineering team behind the <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/tag/solana" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Solana blockchain</a>, said its new consensus protocol, <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/innovation/solanas-biggest-upgrade-in-history-is-now-live-for-testing" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Alpenglow</a>, is now live on Solana’s main network.&nbsp;
A consensus protocol is the set of rules a network’s computers use to agree on which transactions are valid.&nbsp;
Solana is a <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/tag/blockchain" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">blockchain</a> known for fast, low-cost transactions. It is increasingly pitched as infrastructure for financial apps.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
 Alpenglow is live on mainnet-beta ⛰️ 🎉 Solana’s new consensus protocol: finality reduced from 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds, built by Anza. Why this is important 🧵 <a href="https://t.co/uItGPrANdi" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">pic.twitter.com/uItGPrANdi</a>— Anza (@anza_xyz) <a href="https://x.com/anza_xyz/status/2112905478921736411?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">October 21, 2026</a>
</blockquote>
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The switch happened at about 14:00 UTC on October 21.&nbsp;
Solana’s validators, the independent operators who run the network and confirm transactions, retired TowerBFT, the protocol Solana had used since its launch in March 2020.&nbsp;
Anza calls it the network’s largest consensus upgrade since then.
<h2 id="the-12-8-seconds-wall-street-cared-about">The 12.8 seconds Wall Street cared about</h2>
The upgrade targets finality, the point at which a transaction can no longer be reversed. An exchange, a bank or a merchant waits for finality before treating money as moved.
Under the old system, Solana gave users a conditional confirmation within seconds, but full finality took about 12.8 seconds.&nbsp;
Anza says Alpenglow merges that two-step process into one that takes roughly 150 milliseconds.&nbsp;
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According to the company, this means exchanges can credit deposits sooner and merchants can confirm payments almost instantly. It says traditional finance needs this kind of guaranteed settlement speed.
<blockquote>
 “This is the largest, most ambitious blockchain upgrade since ‘The Merge’ and Anza took it from a white paper to running on mainnet in under 18 months,” said Brennan Watt, CEO of Anza. The Merge refers to Ethereum’s 2022 move to a new consensus system.
</blockquote>
<h2 id="changing-the-engine-mid-flight">Changing the engine mid-flight</h2>
Speed is only part of the story. Validators swapped out the system at the core of a running blockchain, carried its existing ledger forward and kept the network available while they did it.
Before the launch, Alpenglow went through public testing, according to the release. That included red-teaming, penetration testing, repeated migration rehearsals and a security competition.&nbsp;
It then ran on Solana’s test networks. Anza built the protocol into Agave, the validator software it maintains. Independent validators then chose to adopt and activate it.
Watt credited “the incredible cast of ecosystem teams and validator operators” with helping harden the protocol over recent months.
Solana has no single operator, and Anza is one of several teams that write software for it.&nbsp;
Its research team, led by ETH Zurich professor Roger Wattenhofer with Quentin Kniep and Kobi Sliwinski, published the Alpenglow design in May 2025.
Anza says more upgrades are in the works:
<ul>
 <li>Rotor changes how block data spreads across the network.</li>
 <li>Geographically aware leader rotations aim to cut delays when the network hands off between the validators producing blocks.</li>
 <li>Quantumglow is a research design that would replace Alpenglow’s current cryptography with hash-based signatures. The goal is security against future quantum computers without slowing finality.</li>
</ul>
None of these has a committed release date yet, Anza says.&nbsp;
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Solana’s new engine settles payments in 150 milliseconds

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