Solana starts testing upgrade that could cut finality from 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds

That moment is known as finality. Exchanges wait for it before crediting deposits, bridges wait before releasing money on another blockchain and merchants need it to know that a payment cannot be taken back.

The upgrade, called Alpenglow, is now being introduced on Solana’s public test network, a copy of the blockchain that uses tokens with no monetary value. Developers can test the migration, find problems and restart the network without putting users’ money at risk.

Solana currently uses a system called TowerBFT to reach consensus, the process through which validators agree on which transactions belong in the permanent record. Validators record their votes on the blockchain and stack enough of them across 32 slots before a block becomes final.