Solana developers are pushing a larger consensus overhaul with the alpenglow proposal, now in the validator voting step.
Just over 10% of the validators have supported the upgrade from European morning hours on Thursday, a tracker with over 88% of eligible participants who has not yet thrown their elections shows.
If it was passed, it would replace proof-of-history and Towerbft with a faster, more elastic design centered on two new components: votor and rotor.
Proof of history is Solana’s existing consensus mechanism. It time stamps transactions that allow validators to determine the right order without wasting time on synchronization (creating a slower network). Towerbft is the network’s voting system. Validators use previous voices as a guide, which quickly helps them to agree on the next block while opposing attacks.
The big feature of the new consensus proposal votor, which would cut the time it takes for a transaction to be completed from more than 12 seconds to approx. 150 milliseconds, causing network confirmations to feel effective immediately for users.
Rotor, planned for a later step, aims to make the network more efficient by reducing the number of times data must be transferred between validators-a upgrade designed to support high activity applications, such as Defi and Gaming.
Alpenglow also introduces a “20+20” resistance model that promises to keep the chain going, although 20% of the validators are contradictory and an additional 20% are offline.
The proposal frames this as a step towards achieving faster speeds while improving security and justice for validators.
