Solana’s validator community has opened voting on a sweeping governance proposal, dubbed SIMD-0326 (Alpenglow), that could mark one of the network’s most significant consensus overhauls.
If passed, the upgrade would replace Solana’s existing TowerBFT mechanism with a faster, simpler, and more resilient system capable of cutting block finality times from 12.8 seconds to as little as 100–150 milliseconds—a leap that would bring Solana’s performance closer to Web2 standards.
🚨BREAKING: @Anza_xyz has started the Solana community governance process for SIMD 326, Alpenglow, the most significant consensus upgrade proposal in the network’s history. Alpenglow is a new consensus algorithm designed to achieve 150ms block finality.
The timeline includes a… pic.twitter.com/rgJ8anu1b0
— SolanaFloor (@SolanaFloor) August 14, 2025
The Alpenglow design was developed by Anza, a Solana-focused research group, and introduces several technical shifts aimed at reducing costs and streamlining validator operations. At its core is Votor, a lightweight voting protocol where validators exchange votes off-chain and provide cryptographic proof of consensus. This replaces TowerBFT’s gossip-heavy traffic and allows blocks to be finalized in one or two rounds, depending on validator support: 80% approval for single-round finality or 60% in a second round.
To offset inflation while lowering bandwidth expenses, the proposal introduces a Validator Admission Ticket (VAT) of 1.6 SOL per epoch, which will be burned instead of spent as vote transaction fees. Supporters argue this could cut validator expenses by around 20%, though critics caution it could increase barriers for smaller operators. Some have suggested a tiered VAT model ranging from 0.5 to 5 SOL based on stake size.
Beyond faster consensus, Alpenglow incorporates a “20+20” resilience model, enabling the network to withstand 20% adversarial activity and another 20% validator downtime without halting. The proposal also lays the groundwork for future upgrades, including replacing Solana’s Turbine data propagation system with a more efficient alternative, Rotor, pending separate governance approval.
Voting on SIMD-0326 runs from epochs 833 to 842 and requires at least two-thirds Yes votes over No votes, with a 33% quorum including abstentions. The outcome will determine whether Solana pursues one of its boldest steps yet toward faster, Web2-like performance.
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