Alpenglow goes live on October 21, 2026: What it means for the Solana price

Published on 10/25/2026 at 13:08 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWS

Alpenglow targets 150-millisecond finality, down from 12.8 seconds. Solana price is 101.42 USD on October 25, 2026, down 2.12 percent.

Network upgrade and ETF flows

Solana activated its Alpenglow consensus upgrade on October 21, 2026, targeting 150-millisecond finality.
U.S. spot Solana ETFs recorded 25.0 million USD in net outflows from October 5 through October 9, 2026.
The Solana price stands at 101.42 USD as of October 25, 2026, 2.12 percent below the UTC daily close of October 24, 2026.
Solana recorded 1.88 million active addresses on October 9, 2026, according to a CryptoTicker report.

Solana, XCCRYPTOSOL6, Illustration mit AI erstellt.

Solana (SOL) activated the Alpenglow consensus upgrade on October 21, 2026, with a target of 150-millisecond transaction finality. The Solana price is 101.42 USD as of October 25, 2026, down 2.12 percent compared with the UTC daily close of October 24, 2026, according to Investing.com.

PR Newswire reported on October 21, 2026, that Alpenglow went live on Solana mainnet-beta at slot 459,653,000. The upgrade replaces TowerBFT, Solana's previous consensus system, and is designed to reduce finality from 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds.

Alpenglow changes validator coordination

Finality is the point at which a transaction can no longer be reversed. According to Galaxy, Alpenglow moves validator votes off the chain and uses certificates to coordinate agreement on blocks. The upgrade was scheduled for the start of epoch 1064 on October 21, 2026.

The design also changes validator costs. Galaxy reported that a flat 0.8 SOL per-epoch fee replaces per-vote costs. The 150-millisecond figure is a design target rather than a reported average for every transaction.

ETF outflows contrast with October network activity

U.S. spot Solana ETFs recorded 25.0 million USD in net outflows across the five sessions from October 5 through October 9, 2026, according to Solana Compass, which cited Farside Investors and The Block data. The outflows ended a 14-week sequence of weekly inflows.

A separate network measure pointed higher on October 9, 2026. CryptoTicker reported 1.88 million unique active addresses, the highest level in 13 months. An active address is an account that sent or received at least one transaction during a day, and it does not necessarily represent one person.

Solana price shows a 2.12 percent daily decline

The Solana price stands at 101.42 USD as of October 25, 2026, according to Investing.com. It is down 2.12 percent compared with the UTC daily close of October 24, 2026. The daily high is 103.07 USD and the daily low (UTC day) is 98.77 USD. Market capitalization is 59.62 billion USD, ranking Solana seventh, while 24-hour volume is 2.55 billion USD. Circulating supply is 589.76 million SOL.