Lightspeed Alpenglow: Solana's Largest Protocol Upgrade Ever | Brennan Watt, Anza
Jun 3, 2025
Brennan Watt, VP of Core Engineering at Anza, discusses the Alpenglow upgrade, which aims to enhance transaction speed and network security for Solana. He shares insights on Anza's role in improving Solana’s scalability and the technical shifts from Tower BFT to innovative solutions. The conversation also delves into strategies for reducing malicious MEV and the changing economics surrounding decentralized transactions. Brennan's expertise sheds light on the future of Solana and the importance of continuous improvement in blockchain technology.
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Alpenglow's Leap in Finality Speed
- Alpenglow replaces Tower BFT with a faster, more synchronous consensus mechanism that certifies blocks before publishing.
- This greatly simplifies fork selection and boosts transaction finality by 100x, achieving confirmations in about 100 milliseconds.
Balancing Resilience and Speed
- Alpenglow adopts a 20% malicious stake resilience plus 20% offline stake tolerance trade-off.
- This practical choice enables faster finality without significantly increasing attack risk given Solana's large stake.
Liveness Gains and Risks
- Solana’s liveness has improved dramatically, handling billions of transactions without outage.
- Alpenglow introduces risks but thorough testing and careful rollouts aim to mitigate network downtime.