Validators on Solana no longer post their votes as on-chain transactions. Under the Alpenglow upgrade activated on October 22, they exchange votes directly and combine them into certificates, so a block can become final after one or two voting rounds instead of waiting on successive blocks.

Finality drops from several seconds to a targeted 150 milliseconds under normal network conditions, with about 900 milliseconds during the handover transition.

The switch went through after 446 of 654 participating validators certified the starting block. Wallets, fees and applications work as before, but network dashboards will show lower transaction totals because validator votes no longer appear as on-chain transactions.

The 150 ms figure is a target rather than a guarantee. Anza, the developer behind the Agave client, notes that machines not voting directly receive finality information later than validators.