Solana is preparing for a larger overhaul that could make her famous fast blockchain even faster – and much easier to drive.
In his “Crypto Monthly Recap for September 2025” research report, published October 3, Global Asset Manager Vaneck says Solana’s upcoming Alpende Upgrade marks the biggest change in network’s core software since launching.
The company calls it “the biggest upgrade to Solana’s consensus in its history”, pointing to six key changes that together promise faster performance, lower costs and greater reliability.
For readers who are less familiar with Solana’s design, alpenglow essentially changes how the network’s thousands of validators agree on which transactions are valid. This process, known as consensus, streamline, so that data moves more efficiently through the system and validators can work with less friction.
What Vaneck highlighted
Faster finality. Today, Solana takes about 12 seconds to end a transaction, which means to confirm it permanently.
Alpenglow cuts it to approx. 150 milliseconds – about the time it takes to flash. Faster finality gets trades, payments and app interactions to feel immediate, bringing Solana closer to reaction to web level.
Off-chain vote. Validators are currently voting on each new block by submitting thousands of small transactions on-chain.
It keeps the network safe, but clogs bandwidth. AlpendeLow moves to vote off-chain and lets validators exchange voices privately and later put a single proof. This cleanses space for ordinary user transactions and helps keep network fees low.
Simpler validator costs. Instead of paying transaction fees for each poll, the Validators will submit a single Validator recording ticket every cycle.
This reduces costs and makes it easier for smaller operators to run validators, which strengthens decentralization and network security.
Streamlined communication. Solana’s nodes constantly share messages to remain synchronized, a process called “gossip.”
Alpenglow reduces this background traffic, so validators spend less time and bandwidth coordinate with each other. It makes the system more stable, even when some validators go offline.
Larger blocks. Developers plan to increase block capacity by 25% by the end of the year.
A block is a batch of transactions added to the main book. More capacity means that Solana can fit multiple transactions in each block, reduce waiting times and overload.
The four -dancer client. Firedancer is built by Jump Crypto and is another, independent version of Solana’s validator’s software expected to go live at the end of 2025.
Having two clients means that the network can continue to run smoothly if you experience problems.
It also includes a proposal for a proposal SIMD-0370that removes Solana’s fixed limit for block size. It would let the network automatically scale with faster hardware and improve long -term flow.
P-tokens for efficiency. Solana’s current Spl -TokensUsed for most assets on the chain requires a lot of computing power to move.
Vaneck says the new P-token Format reduces this requirement by approx. 95 percent, freeing up space in each block and increasing the total transaction capacity by approx. 10 percent. This makes token transfers cheaper and the network more efficiently during strong use.
Together, these changes show how Solana redesigns its infrastructure in support of the next generation of decentralized financing, gaming and tokenized asset applications.
What Solana’s engineers build beyond that
Vaneck’s analysis captures the most important elements of Alpenglow, but Solana Labs’ AlpendeLow -White Book shows that the upgrade goes even deeper than the company described. Engineers have built several changes behind the scenes aimed at making Solana faster, more robust and easier to maintain over time.
One of the most significant additions is RotorA new TV layer that replaces Solana’s existing turbine system for spreading data among validators.
Rotor transmits information more efficiently, cuts down on duplicated packages and shortens the time it takes for new blocks to reach the entire network.
The change helps transactions to confirm more smooth and make the network more responsive under heavy load.
Another improvement involves Local signature aggregationwhich allows validators to combine multiple transaction signatures before emitting them to the rest of the network.
Each transaction on Solana has a digital signature that proves its origin; Treatment of each one uses separate computing power and bandwidth. By grouping signatures together, alpenglow lights the workload, which reduces the calculation costs of maintaining security.
The upgrade also strengthens Fault toleranceTo ensure that Solana continues to work, even if as many as 40 percent of the validators lose connection or temporarily go offline. This improvement makes the network more elastic during regional power cuts or traffic tips, limiting the risk of downtime.
In addition, alpenglow cuts unnecessary “gossip” traffic – the background messages Validators exchange to be synchronized. Reducing this scrap not only releases bandwidth, but also helps validators in regions with slower Internet connections to participate effectively, extending Solana’s global base of operators.
Finally, Solana has reworked validator -participation through a Ticket -based system It replaces thousands of small voting transactions with a single predictable recording stage. This change simplifies the cost structure and lowers barriers to smaller operators and promotes more fair participation and stronger decentralization.
Overall, these improvements are converting alpenglow from a simple speed upgrade into a full redesign of how Solana communicates internally. They show Solana Labs’ push to make the network not only quickly in theory, but also reliable in the scale important steps as several economic and consumer applications move on the chain.
