Solana start test can reduce the final confirmation time from 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds upgrade

Applications can still process transactions as usual, without changing wallets or transfer methods.

The Alpenglow upgrade had previously been running for more than four months on a small testnet network built specifically for the upgrade. It is now being migrated to an existing testnet , in order to test whether large-scale nodes that already support blockchain can complete the switch simultaneously with services.

The validator required running Agave 4.3 to participate in the test. Agave is the core on which Solana runs, maintained by Anza Inc., one of the teams responsible for developing the Solana network.

On September 21, Anza recommended Agave 4.3 to mainnet for all validator s. Prior to this, the release had been rolled out in phases, first covering 10% of staking operators and then expanding to 25% [2].

Firedancer and Frankendancer, two alternative validators developed by Jump crypto , do not currently support the Alpenglow test.

The purpose of these alternatives is to reduce Solana 's dependence on a single software and avoid the entire validator when Agave fails. They are absent from this test, meaning that for the first time Alpenglow migration will be done entirely by Agave.

According to Anza's schedule, September 28th is listed as a tentative date for mainnet to enable Agave 4.3 related functionality. But this isn't the confirmed time Alpenglow will be up and running. As of Wednesday morning, the Anza tracking page still marks the testnet switch itself as pending.