Overview
- Alpenglow’s first phase, called Votor, is active on Solana’s public devnet and testnet but has not been switched on for mainnet use.
- The change moves validator votes out of blocks and into direct vote certificates so a block can reach finality after one voting round if validators holding 80% of stake agree.
- The 150 millisecond finality figure is a target based on tests and simulations and has not yet been proven under live‑market conditions.
- Simple apps that only send transactions and read balances need no migration, but explorers, indexers, and tools that read vote transactions must update how they ingest and report blocks.
- Exchanges and custodial services will keep using their own deposit and finality checks, and the Foundation has told data providers to keep competing candidate blocks separate until confirmation.