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The decentralized
- The upgrade of Solana would change the consensual blockchain mechanism.
- But Alpenglow focuses on speed.
- Faster than other blockchains?
GM, Aleks here.
Is Solana about to obtain her own moment of “fusion”?
The short answer: Yes. Let me explain.
The merger was an upgrade in 2022 which saw the blockchain Ethereum modify its consensus mechanism, the rules which determine how the network of independent computers performing Ethereum reaches a consensus on the validity of each transaction.
On Monday, a trio of Solana’s researchers from the Spinoff Anza de Solana Labs proposed an apparently seismic change to the consensual mechanism of Solana, nicknamed “Alpenglow”.
(The trio attended Eth Zurich, one of the world’s leading universities for science and technology, and named their upgrade after the beautiful pinkish light that adorns the Swiss summits to Dusk and Dawn.)
But the merger concerned the planet – its main objective was to reduce Ethereum energy consumption by around 99%.
Everything about speed
Alpenglow is a question of speed.
The researchers carried out tests: if it is adopted, Alpenglow would reduce the latency of Solana – the time required to finalize a block of transactions – just under 13 seconds as little as a tenth of a second.
“Alpenglow is not only a new consensus protocol, but the biggest change for Solana’s main protocol since, well,”, they write in a blog article describing technology.
“This means that Solana can compete with the Web2 infrastructure in terms of responsiveness, making technology of the viable blockchain for entirely new categories of applications that require real -time performance.”
Online, some suggested on Nasdaq days as the home of the financial markets was numbered.
Arielle Pennington, head of communications in the Solana Foundation, put her into practice: “Applications that look like Tiktok. Payments that are instantly feasting. Games without gap. ”
Roger Wattenhofer, one of the researchers who built Alpenglow, put it in terms of Crypto in Accelerate, a one -week conference on Solana which takes place in New York this week, when he stressed that the fastest blockchains claim the latency of 400 millisecondes.
“Really, we will be much faster than all the other blockchains,” he said, allowing him to make an “apple to a slightly different comparison”.
Alpenglow could be put online at the end of this year or at the beginning of 2026, according to Watshofer.
Solana, like any good blockchain, has a democratic method to perform major upgrades, and Alpenglow will have to go through this process.
Recently, a change offered in Tokenomics in Solana failed after a wave of late no-votes. But Wattenhofer, speaking on stage in New York, seemed confident.
“It will be Solana’s new consensual protocol,” he said at the top of his presentation.
It already has the support of some of the most powerful figures in Solana, including the co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and the developers Mert Mumtaz.
Top stories of the week
This week in governance deffruit
Proposal: Aave Dao plans to activate the “umbrella” security function
Voting: Arbitrum Dao vote to implement the upgrading of Ethereum Pectra
Proposal: Derive considers the sale in Synthetix
Post of the week
The French crypto entrepreneur Marc Zeller is very, very worried about all the abductions of his country of origin.
All these abductions in France are frightening.
I constantly live the fear they kidnap my mother-in-law, who lives at 36 bis rue Rivay, 92300 Levallois-Perret.
She comes out of work at 6 p.m.
– Marc “Billy” Zeller 👻 🦇🔊 🦇🔊 🦇🔊 🦇🔊 🦇🔊 🦇🔊 🦇🔊 (@lemiscate) May 13, 2025
Do you have a tip on Defi? Handle Aleks@dlnews.com.
