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Last week we dive deep into SIMD-326 (Alpenglow), which proposes a new consensus protocol for Solana. The Headline impact from Alpenglow is a reduction of 100x in the Finality Time of Solana, from ~ 12.8 seconds to around 150 ms.
A validator signaling voice for SIMD-326 took place between Epochs 840 (from 27 August) and 842 (ending today), with a provisional participation of 51% from writing.
SIMD-326 will pass by, with ~ 99% of non-abusing votes. Now that the voice of Alpenglow is coming to an end, it is a good time for a refresher course on how Solana Governance works.
The Onchain board of Solana is intended to indicate a community sensing instead of automatic enforcement of changes. In other words, social consensus is the ultimate referee, where the real decision point rests with validators and developers who have to agree to implement and implement the new software. An important stakeholder in this process is the Anza team, which has to design and roll out changes in the agave client through job gates.
