Overview
- Alpenglow has entered Solana’s public testnet rollout to let a broader set of validators and services test a new consensus design and migration procedures.
- The upgrade swaps TowerBFT for a protocol called Votor that bundles direct validator votes into certificates that can finalize a block in one or two voting rounds.
- Validators must run Agave v4.3 to participate in the test while alternative clients Firedancer and Frankendancer are currently listed as unsupported.
- No activation epoch or confirmed mainnet launch date has been published and a tentative Sept. 28 Agave feature activation is not a confirmed Alpenglow mainnet start.
- Alpenglow already ran for months on a community cluster and the public testnet will check real-world finality, but exchanges, bridges and wallets will still control when they treat payments as settled.