Solana’s New Protocol: Is It Really That Fast? 🤔

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So, here we are. Solana, this big-shot cryptocurrency, decides to shake things up with a new consensus protocol. They call it Alpenglow. Sounds fancy, right? Apparently, it’s supposed to make the network faster—like, “near Web2 levels” fast. Wow, what a revelation! Who knew they could compete with the likes of Web2? 🙄

Solana is Trying to Outrun Web2 with Alpenglow. Good Luck with That!

So, Solana, one of the biggest players in the crypto game, is making some changes. They’ve got this developer group, Anza, who’s come up with Alpenglow. It’s supposed to boost performance and target new use cases. Because, you know, the old ones just weren’t cutting it. 🙃

In a blog post—because that’s what you do when you want to announce something important—Anza says they’re ditching the old stuff like TowerBFT and Proof-of-History. They’re replacing it with Votor and Rotor. Sounds like a bad sci-fi movie, doesn’t it? But hey, they promise faster voting and finalization times. Who doesn’t want that? 🥱

Votor is the voting part of Alpenglow. It’s supposed to make finalizing blocks more efficient based on how much stake is in the game. And Rotor? Well, it’s optimizing data dissemination. Because we all know how much we love optimized data. Can’t get enough of it! 😏

Oh, and let’s not forget the resilience measures. Alpenglow is ready to handle up to 20% of the stake acting like a bunch of adversaries. Sounds like a party! 🎉

Anza is claiming that with these changes, Solana will finalize transactions in 100-150 milliseconds. That’s a 100x reduction! Wow, new use cases are just waiting to be discovered. Or maybe they’re just waiting for someone to actually use them. 🤷‍♂️

They explained:

A median latency of 150 ms doesn’t just mean Solana is fast—it means they can actually compete with Web2. Who knew blockchain could be viable for real-time applications? What a concept! 🙄

Potential applications? Oh, just your typical on-chain gaming systems, faster Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN), and other things that need speed. You know, the usual stuff that traditional providers already do. No big deal. 😏

The consensus protocol is in the prototyping phase and will hit Solana’s testnet in a few months. The rollout? Well, that’ll be decided through a Solana Improvement Document (SIMD) proposal later this year. Because nothing says “we’re ready” like a proposal! 🙃

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2025-05-26 12:57