Rumors regarding the launch of the Alpenglow mainnet on September 28 have been dismissed by Solana developers. Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, addressed the speculation by using the term decel, indicating a preference for a slower, more cautious approach to protocol updates.
Roger Wattenhofer, head of research at Anza and professor at ETH Zurich, clarified that there is no immediate plan for an Alpenglow activation. He noted that the protocol entered public testing only recently, and a rushed deployment would be inconsistent with standard testing procedures for such significant changes.
The confusion likely originated from the release schedule of the Agave v4.3 validator client, which mentioned a feature activation window for September 28 without referencing Alpenglow. A subsequent timeline for v4.4 suggests another tentative window on November 9, though this also lacks specific mention of the upgrade.
Alpenglow is designed to overhaul the consensus mechanism, aiming to reduce finality time from approximately 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds. This follows a separate upgrade in August that halved block production time from 400 to 200 milliseconds. Developers have been preparing validators for Alpenglow since July.
Market reaction to the clarification was minimal, with SOL trading at $119.85, reflecting a 0.36% decline over 24 hours. The lack of volatility suggests that traders had not significantly priced in the rumored launch date, especially given the network's recent history with a routing fault in August.
