Solana Alpenglow Cut Votes From Blocks 18 Minutes Into Epoch 1064

Solana Alpenglow is live, and the blocks themselves show when it switched on. Epoch 1064 began at 13:36:05 UTC on October 21. About 18 minutes later, vote transactions stopped appearing in Solana blocks.

Only the epoch start appears on the Solana Foundation's Alpenglow page. Block data adds a precise slot to that picture. This write-up of the Solana Alpenglow switch combines the page with readings from Solana's public RPC and block explorer.

What the Foundation says about Alpenglow

The activation line on the Solana Foundation's Alpenglow page. Source: Solana Foundation.

According to the page, Alpenglow is live on mainnet and activated in epoch 1064. Its new voting layer, called Votor, has run since that epoch. A second piece, Rotor, replaces the way block data spreads across the network. Rotor is planned for a later release and is not yet scheduled.

Finality is the headline number. Under TowerBFT a block took about 12.8 seconds to become final, and Alpenglow targets roughly 150 milliseconds. Per the page, that figure measures finality and not block production. Block times were cut separately, from 400 to 200 milliseconds, in four stages finished this month.

Solana vote transactions left the blocks at one slot

Before Alpenglow, validators voted by sending transactions, and those votes filled most of every block. Take the five blocks ending at slot 459,652,999, as Solana's public RPC returns them. Together they held 4,925 transactions. Roughly two in three, 3,201 in all, called the Vote program.

Slot 459,652,999 was the last block carrying any votes, stamped 13:54:00 UTC. Eight slots then went missing, starting at 459,653,000. Slot 459,653,008 came next at 13:54:03 UTC and held 1,701 transactions, not one of them a vote.

Solana Explorer pages for the last vote-carrying block and the first block after the gap. Source: Solana Explorer, slot 459,652,999 and slot 459,653,008.

Epoch 1064 opened at slot 459,648,000, so the cutover sits 5,000 slots into the epoch. Since the Solana Alpenglow cutover, blocks have stayed vote-free. Fifteen blocks from slot 459,653,008 onward averaged about 558 transactions. A block read at 05:33 UTC on October 22, slot 459,918,000, held 253 transactions and again no votes.

What changes for validators and builders

Vote transactions are no longer in blocks, the Foundation page says, so any metric that counted them needs a new baseline. Proof of History no longer paces block production. The confirmed and finalized commitment levels now describe the same state.

Streaming consumers face a new rule. A slot can carry more than one candidate block, and Geyser events are now tagged with the bank they came from. Execution is untouched, since the virtual machine, transaction formats and fees stay the same.

Validators must run v4.3.2 of an Agave-based client: Agave, Jito-Solana or Harmonic Salsa. Firedancer and Frankendancer were not supported for the migration. Each voting validator also needs 0.8 SOL above its rent-exempt minimum for the new admission ticket, first charged at the start of epoch 1064.

Ask the public RPC endpoint for its version and it answers solana-core 4.3.2. Ordinary users of Solana Alpenglow need do nothing, the page says. Wallets and apps work as before, and only the wait for certainty shrinks. Our earlier Alpenglow date report covered the schedule.