Solana is currently touted as one of the most popular and powerful projects in the crypto industry, a status it has achieved thanks to its solid technical architecture and outstanding evolution. The network excels in key areas of blockchain performance, offering a combination of speed, affordability, and scalability, which have helped it forge ahead of other crypto initiatives.
One of Soalan’s best-known features is its high throughput, as the platform can process up to 65,000 transactions per second (TPS) while maintaining extremely low fees. Solana also offers smart contract functionality and has been a key player in the development of the dApp and DeFi ecosystems. Its native token, SOL, which powers the network’s operations, has benefited significantly from Solana’s strength and rapid development, a fact reflected in the Solana to USD rate, which has appreciated considerably over the years.
In fact, as Solana’s ecosystem expands, users increasingly rely on secure multi-asset wallets to manage their SOL, SPL tokens, and NFTs. Hardware solutions like Tangem Wallet, which supports 85+ networks, more than 16,000 tokens, and full NFT support, have become a popular choice for those looking to store Solana assets safely while keeping the experience simple and mobile-friendly.
It’s easy to see why Solana has earned the “Ethereum’s killer” moniker. But the blockchain is far from perfect, which is why Solana is now getting ready to roll out major changes that will hopefully address its current challenges and further optimize its performance.
The need for ongoing progress
Just because Solana ticks all the right boxes for a crypto powerhouse doesn’t mean its evolution is complete. Its journey so far has certainly been impressive, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement. For instance, technical issues during periods of high congestion have led to several outages and downtimes, and raised questions about the network’s reliability. Centralization is another major concern. Although Solana has over 3,400 validators, the hardware requirements for running a validator are quite high, leading to a concentration of power in a limited number of nodes.
Many also argue that the Solana Foundation and Solana Labs are too involved in the network’s operations, which affects its decentralization. If developers can’t find a solution to these problems soon, Solana risks losing both its relevance and its competitive edge.
Besides, crypto is a space where the speed of innovation forces projects to continually raise the bar. Here, the don’t fix what’s not broken approach doesn’t apply because there are only two choices: to advance or perish. Every crypto is a work in progress, so Solana can’t afford to rest on its laurels.
Fortunately, Ethereum’s contender has no intention of standing still, as evidenced by its bold plans. Its upcoming upgrades are expected to bring important enhancements to its system, so let’s take a closer look at what’s on the horizon.
The Alpenglow upgrade
In May 2025, Anza, a Solana research and development firm, brought forward the Alpenglow proposal. The intention was to introduce changes to the network’s consensus mechanism in order to make it faster and more resilient. The improvement proposal was well-received, with nearly 98% of validators voting in favor of it in September 2025.
The Crypto Monthly Recap for September 2025 report published by global asset manager VanEck provides an in-depth look at the Alpenglow upgrade and the benefits it’s expected to bring. According to the investment firm, Alpenglow is going to be the most impactful update that Solana has undergone since its debut.
Solana’s Proof-of-History (PoH) has served the network well so far, but its limitations cannot be overlooked. The high latency, high costs for validators, and operational complexity seem to be the main issues with the current system. Alpenglow aims to address these shortcomings by replacing Solana’s PoH with a new consensus architecture built on two main components: Votor and Rotor.
This shift is poised to completely transform Solana’s core structure and the way it operates by focusing on seven main areas, as highlighted by VanEck analysts:
Transaction finality
Typically, Solana can achieve transaction finality in about 12 seconds, which is relatively fast, especially when compared to other blockchains such as Bitcoin, where it can take up to ten minutes for block confirmation. However, that’s not fast enough by Solana’s standards, so the Alpenglow upgrade is going to reduce confirmation time to approximately 150 milliseconds. Greater speed will lead to near-instant payments and applications, similar to the responsiveness of conventional apps.
Off-chain voting
The voting systems will also change, moving from on-chain to off-chain votes that validators exchange privately. Instead of sending thousands of small transactions on the chain, which is both time-consuming and costly, they will only submit the final proof, which will optimize bandwidth usage and reduce network fees.
Validator costs
Solana requires validators to pay fees for every voting transaction, leading to high costs for those who want to participate in network consensus. The new protocol will replace these fees with a Validator Admission Ticket that validators will only have to pay once for each cycle, thus reducing barriers to entry for smaller operators.
Communication
The blockchain relies on constant messaging, also known as gossip, to ensure synchronized communication. In the upcoming mechanism, this information flow that runs in the background will be reduced significantly, so validators will use fewer resources and communicate more efficiently.
Block capacity
Block capacity will increase by 25% in the lead-up to the upgrade, which will allow for the inclusion of more transactions into each block that gets recorded on the ledger. Increasing block size will result in faster execution times and lower congestion.
P-tokens
Solana’s SPL (Solana Program Library) Tokens consume a lot of computational resources, which is not ideal for processing transactions. Following the upgrade, they will be replaced with P-tokens, a new type of token that will reduce the computing power needed for transactions by 95% and boost efficiency by approximately 10%.
The Firedancer client
Firedancer is the second independent version of the validator software, planned to go live by the end of the year. Its purpose is to help the network maintain stable operations and continue to run smoothly when clients experience issues.
At the moment, the Alpenglow upgrade is in a public testnet phase and is scheduled for mainnet deployment in the first quarter of 2026. If everything goes as planned, Solana will soon become a much faster and stronger blockchain.
