Solana activates Alpenglow upgrade targeting 150ms finality while NSCC achieves 98% reduction in equities payment obligations

Solana activated Alpenglow on mainnet on Oct. 21 at slot 459,653,000, replacing TowerBFT with a consensus design targeting about 150 milliseconds to finality, meaning confirmed and finalized are the same state. Concurrently, the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC) uses multilateral netting to cut the value of equities payment obligations by an average of 98%, based on DTCC reports of $608 trillion in equity transactions processed in 2025. Alpenglow's first phase, Votor, allows finalization in one or two voting rounds, shortening the time until a transaction becomes irreversible, while NSCC settles on T+1.