TLDR
- Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade is scheduled for October 21 and targets transaction finality of about 150 milliseconds.
- SOL trades near $107.80, up 0.3% in 24 hours, but is down more than 10.5% over seven days.
- Alpenglow replaces TowerBFT with Votor, which removes validator vote transactions from blocks.
- SkyAI sold 1 million SOL worth $107 million and still holds another 1 million SOL, according to Lookonchain.
- The daily chart shows SOL broke below a rising channel, with support near $100.
Solana’s SOL price is holding near $108 as the network prepares for its Alpenglow upgrade. The token traded at $107.80 at the time of writing, up about 0.3% over 24 hours. Its 24-hour trading volume rose 52% to $4.07 billion.
Over the past week, SOL has lost more than 10.5% during a broader crypto market selloff. The price has stayed close to flat in recent sessions after that drop.
Solana developer Anza confirmed that Alpenglow will reach mainnet-beta on October 21 at about 14:50 UTC. The announcement follows 18 months of development focused on the network’s consensus system.
What Alpenglow Changes
The upgrade targets transaction finality of about 150 milliseconds. Current finality takes around 12.8 seconds, so the target is roughly 85 times faster. The Solana Foundation noted that the 150-millisecond figure is a target and that actual performance will depend on network conditions.
Solana’s Alpenglow Upgrade Scheduled for October 21, Targets Finality Cut from 12.8 Seconds to 150ms
Solana core developer Anza announced that the Alpenglow consensus upgrade is scheduled to go live on Solana mainnet-beta on October 21 at approximately 14:50 UTC. The upgrade… pic.twitter.com/gfnSQ3NHFJ
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) October 13, 2026
Alpenglow replaces TowerBFT, the voting system Solana has used since its 2020 launch. It introduces Votor, a protocol in which validators exchange votes directly instead of sending them as on-chain transactions. Votes are combined into certificates, and blocks become final after one or two voting rounds.
Removing vote transactions frees blockspace for regular users. It could also cause Solana’s reported transaction count to fall sharply on activation day, even if user activity stays the same.
Validators must prepare for the switch. Operators need software built on Agave 4.3.0, and Firedancer and Frankendancer operators will need to switch temporarily because neither supports the initial migration. Voting costs of roughly 1 SOL per epoch will be replaced by a flat admission fee of 0.8 SOL.
The migration is set for epoch 1064, expected to begin around 15:00 UTC on October 21. Solana will use its old voting system for the first 5,000 slots before moving to Alpenglow about 18 minutes later.
SOL Price Pressure and Chart View
Selling by a large holder has also weighed on sentiment. Lookonchain reported that SkyAI, a Solana treasury firm, sold 1 million SOL worth $107 million. The firm still holds another 1 million SOL.
Analyst BATMAN (@CryptosBatman) said SOL is back at the lower rail of its ascending channel. He noted that the previous channel led to a sharp vertical expansion and said another strong leg higher is possible if the structure holds.
$SOL is back at the lower rail of its ascending channel.
The previous channel led to a sharp vertical expansion. If this structure holds, we could be looking at another strong leg higher pic.twitter.com/prrHopcetK
— BATMAN ⚡ (@CryptosBatman) October 13, 2026
The daily chart shows a slightly different picture. SOL broke below the lower line of its rising channel in early October and is now retesting that line from below near $110. The RSI sits at 41.95 and the MACD histogram is negative, both pointing to weak momentum.
Support sits in the $92 to $98 zone, where SOL consolidated in September. The level to watch next is the $110 resistance area, where a daily close above it would put the price back inside the channel.
On October 21, the Alpenglow migration is set to begin around 15:00 UTC.
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