Solana targets faster finality, while Wall Street cuts the cash that must move

Solana activated its Alpenglow consensus upgrade on mainnet on Oct. 21 at slot 459,653,000, replacing TowerBFT with a design targeting roughly 150 milliseconds to finality. Under the new protocol, confirmed and finalized become the same state. The piece pairs this with a look at how NSCC multilateral netting reduces equities payment obligations, framing faster settlement as relevant to how much cash must actually move. Traders watching SOL get a concrete technical milestone, but the story is informational rather than a direct price catalyst.