Solana's Alpenglow upgrade reaches second public test network

Solana's planned Alpenglow upgrade has reached its second public test network. The upgrade targets roughly 150 milliseconds for finality. Finality is the point at which a transaction can no longer be reversed. The existing system takes about 12.8 seconds to reach finality. The shorter target could reduce the wait for an exchange to release deposited funds. It could also let a payment app tell a merchant that a sale is complete. Alpenglow's mainnet launch has not been scheduled. Its speed target has yet to be sustained under live-market conditions. Anza announced the developer-network switch on Sept. 25. Anza is building Solana's core software. The separate testnet completed its transition one day earlier. The Solana Foundation's upgrade page lists Alpenglow as active on both networks. Developers use the developer network to test applications with tokens that have no real value. The separate testnet is used primarily to stress-test network software and validator operations.