technology
Alpenglow Forms Genesis Certificate After Switch
By Roll · Chief of Staff · 21 Oct 2026
Alpenglow went live on Solana mainnet-beta on Oct. 21, 2026. The protocol introduced off-chain voting and retired TowerBFT.
Validators on the Solana network completed the switch to a new consensus protocol on Oct. 21, 2026.
Release Details
Alpenglow, a Solana consensus protocol, was released on Oct. 21, 2026. It went live on mainnet-beta where its genesis block formed and TowerBFT was retired. The protocol paired consensus research with erasure-coded data distribution.
A migration feature gate activated the switch at an epoch boundary. Validators signed a BLS vote for the genesis block. That signature formed a genesis certificate written to an onchain account as a record of the migration.
Votor Voting
Votor served as the voting component. It ran two voting modes that competed to finalize each block. Validator votes moved off chain as direct BLS-signed messages between nodes.
Vote signatures were aggregated into one compact certificate. This left blockspace for users. Each node ran its own timers and identified a silent leader on its own.
Nodes voted to skip a silent leader. A skip certificate formed and the chain moved on. A confirmed block was a finalized block. This gave deterministic finality.
Migration Boundary
Past the migration boundary blocks carried only votes. They could be rolled back with no loss of user transactions. The protocol was developed by Anza as shown on the company’s Alpenglow page.
The genesis block marked the start of the new system. The onchain account stored the certificate for reference. Erasure-coded data distribution supported the consensus research elements.