Alpenglow, the first major upgrade to Solana's consensus, went live on mainnet at about 1:54 pm UTC on Wednesday. The Solana Foundation's Alpenglow dashboard showed the activation time. Cointelegraph reported it on October 21, 2026.
The 99% figure is a goal, not a measured result. The upgrade aims to cut the time it takes for a Solana transaction to reach finality by 99%. In practice, that would mean transactions settle almost immediately and applications on the network respond faster.
The report does not say how long finality takes now or how long it took before the upgrade. It also gives no early data on whether the network is reaching the target. Those numbers are not yet known from this source.
For anyone already holding a SOL perpetual on Bitget, Bybit, MEXC or OKX, nothing changes directly. These contracts are matched and settled on each exchange's own books, not on the Solana chain. The report says nothing about funding rates, trading fees or exchange liquidity. Any effect would show up first in deposit and withdrawal times for SOL, and the source does not cover that.
Source: cointelegraph — Solana’s Alpenglow launches on mainnet, targets 99% faster finality
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