Solana sets October 21 for massive Alpenglow upgrade that could make transactions 99% faster to finalize

Solana developers have scheduled October 21 for the Alpenglow upgrade, a mainnet consensus replacement that could cut transaction finality to roughly 150 milliseconds, about 99% faster than current times. The rollout requires a coordinated validator handoff and finality gains will depend on network conditions. A successful upgrade would strengthen Solana's speed and scalability narrative versus rival layer-1 chains, a key differentiator traders watch when pricing SOL.