Solana plans to implement its most aggressive network upgrade since its inception in 2026. This plan involves comprehensive system overhauls, from the underlying consensus mechanism to upper-layer infrastructure. The core goal is clear—create an on-chain environment at the level of centralized exchanges, enabling native centralized limit order books (CLOB) to compete directly with centralized exchanges (CEX) in terms of latency, liquidity, and fairness.

The most notable aspect of this upgrade plan is Alpenglow, a major protocol-level change.

**Thorough Reconstruction of the Consensus Mechanism**

Alpenglow breaks away from traditional validation processes. Previously, multiple rounds of voting were conducted sequentially. The new architecture allows validators to aggregate voting data off-chain and finalize the confirmation within one or two rounds. The immediate effect of this change is a reduction in the theoretical final confirmation time from 12.8 seconds to 100-150 milliseconds.

The cleverness of this new system lies in its dual-path design. The first path: if a block’s stake support exceeds 80%, it is accepted directly without waiting. The second path: if support is between 60% and 80%, a second round of voting is triggered. As long as the support in the second round remains above 60%, the block can be anchored. This mechanism ensures network security while significantly improving confirmation efficiency.