Can Solana’s Alpenglow Protocol Outshine Ethereum’s Pectra Upgrade?

Earlier today, Solana announced Alpenglow, a major protocol upgrade designed to improve transaction speed and network efficiency. Unveiled by infrastructure firm Anza, a Solana Labs spinout, the new protocol aims to replace Solana’s current consensus mechanisms with a redesigned system. But the crypto community is curious: will it be as successful as the ETH Pectra upgrade?

Solana Upgrade: The Road to Alpenglow

Solana Alpenglow came into place as Solana’s network matured and the blockchain faced a surge in transaction volumes. This has caused congestion, which could be seen from its network outages on February 6, 2024, and multiple events in 2022.

Another key issue was the complexity and latency of Proof of History (PoH) and Tower BFT. With the introduction of thousands of meme coins on Solana, the surge in transactions caused bottlenecks.

1/ Introducing the largest Solana Protocol change ever: Alpenglow, Solana's new consensus protocol conceived by the Anza Research team. Say goodbye to Tower BFT and Proof of History. Say hello to Votor & Rotor 🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/KPNQxQ1jBg

— Anza (@anza_xyz) May 19, 2025

According to details from Anza’s post, Alpenglow focuses primarily on reducing transaction finality to approximately 150 milliseconds. This makes it particularly suitable for real-time applications such as gaming and DeFi platforms.

This approach replaces Solana’s signature Proof of History and Tower BFT with the new Votor and Rotor systems. This also fundamentally changes how the network reaches consensus. Alpenglow is also considered as large as Ethereum’s transition from proof of work to proof of stake.

ETH Pectra Upgrade vs Solana Alpenglow: Key Differences

Solana’s newly announced Alpenglow protocol and Ethereum’s recently launched Pectra upgrade highlight different approaches to blockchain scalability challenges. While both aim to improve their respective networks, they focus on different aspects of performance and user experience.

In contrast, Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade, which went live on May 7, 2025, maintains its existing Proof of Stake consensus mechanism. It also implements improvements through various Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). Pectra prioritizes broader scalability enhancements and user experience upgrades. This includes account abstraction and improved staking mechanisms rather than pushing for ultra-fast transaction speeds.

The implementation timelines also differ. While Ethereum has already deployed Pectra to its mainnet, Solana’s Alpenglow remains in development with testing planned by the end of 2025.

The most interesting aspect is the performance of the Ethereum price after the Pectra upgrade. Even though the ETH price hovered around $1,900 on the day of the upgrade, the momentum of the upgrade caught up and helped Ethereum to pump as high as 40% to $2,500. The parabolic indicator also shows the potential for Ethereum to jump above $2,700 at present.

Community Reactions

The response to the Solana Alpenglow upgrade has been quite positive. Crypto investor Marino touted the upgrade as one of the biggest ones on Solana ever. Craig Burel, GP at Reciprocal Ventures, called Alpenglow a very big deal. He also mentioned that it delivers a 100x improvement in time to finality.

Analyst Aixbt said that Alpenglow is brutal for Solana and highlighted that it indeed looks like an upgrade.

Given the popularity the upgrade is getting, the community can brace for a potential price pump that could be bigger than that of Ethereum. While ETH didn’t show an immediate price jump post-Pectra upgrade, the opposite can be expected for Solana. With Solana currently hovering at the $169 level, analysis also shows the potential for SOL to drop to $140.