On May 20, 2025, Anza, a company founded by executives and core engineers from Solana Labs, announced a plan known as the "biggest change to Solana's core protocol in history" — Alpenglow. This new architecture will replace the existing TowerBFT consensus mechanism and Historical Proof timestamp system with the Votor and Rotor components, aiming to make Solana faster, more stable, and competitively comparable to internet infrastructure as a high-throughput Layer-1 blockchain.

The two most important points of this Solana transformation are as follows.

· Innovation of the Votor Consensus Mechanism: Votor replaces TowerBFT, adopts a more efficient direct communication mode, and accelerates block confirmation through a parallel voting mechanism. When 80% of stake nodes agree, blocks can be confirmed in one round; when the staking ratio is 60%, it requires two rounds of confirmation. This design shortens the block processing time to 100-150 milliseconds, significantly improving transaction speed and network scalability.

· Optimization of Rotor Block Propagation: Rotor enhances the Turbine system, improves block propagation efficiency through single-layer relay nodes and staking-based bandwidth optimization. By utilizing erasure coding technology, Rotor ensures rapid block data distribution and reconstruction from partial data fragments, further enhancing the performance and stability of the Solana network.

How Signficant is a Change in Consensus Mechanism?

The consensus mechanism is a core pillar of blockchain technology, directly determining the network's security, efficiency, and decentralization. Its transformation is a milestone in the history of blockchain development. Solana's existing TowerBFT consensus mechanism is known for its high throughput, but as the network rapidly scales, it faces challenges of transaction congestion and resource allocation efficiency.

The Alpenglow plan by Anza aims to address these pain points and further unleash the network's potential by introducing the Votor and Rotor components to completely reshape Solana's consensus mechanism. Anza's core team members Quentin Kniep, Kobi Sliwinski, and Roger Wattenhofer stated in the whitepaper: "The release of Alpenglow will be a turning point for Solana — it is not just a new consensus protocol but a key step for Solana to achieve internet infrastructure-level competitiveness."

The scale and impact of this transformation can be compared to Ethereum's historic transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS). Alpenglow not only optimized the block proposal and validation process, reducing transaction latency, but also enhanced the network's decentralization and attack resistance through a redesign of the economic incentive mechanism.

More importantly, it has opened up new possibilities for Solana. Supporting higher transaction throughput, lower fees, and a broader range of applications, from DeFi to Web3 applications, for a comprehensive explosion. The success of this transformation will directly determine whether Solana can gain an edge in its competition with Ethereum, and even challenge the position of traditional Internet infrastructure. As envisioned by Anza, Alpenglow is not just a technical upgrade, but is intended to make Solana the cornerstone of the next-generation Internet, redefining the role of blockchain in the global digital economy.

Alpenglow release event on-site, image source from X

Coming from the Solana Foundation's Core Circle, What is Anza's Background?

Anza's story began in Solana Labs' core circle, a company founded by Solana Labs executives and core engineers who split off in 2023. While Solana Labs, as the original developer of the Solana blockchain, focused on the protocol's underlying design and early ecosystem expansion, the rapid growth of the Solana network brought about a surge in transaction volume and highlighted network congestion issues, prompting the ecosystem to need a more flexible, focused entity to address technical challenges and accelerate innovation.

Anza emerged to build a next-generation developer shop centered around Solana, focusing on core engineering, validator client optimization, and the widespread application of the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), aiming to drive long-term ecosystem development and competitiveness without dispersing Solana Labs' core resources.

Anza's team consists of a group of top talents in the blockchain field, with core members including Quentin Kniep, Kobi Sliwinski, and Roger Wattenhofer. Quentin Kniep is an engineer who has delved into distributed systems and high-performance computing for many years, leading core protocol optimization work at Solana Labs and excelling at translating complex technology into practical solutions. Kobi Sliwinski is renowned for his expertise in consensus mechanisms and network architecture design, having contributed key code to the development of TowerBFT in the early Solana ecosystem. Roger Wattenhofer, with significant influence in both academia and the blockchain industry, brings his rich experience in distributed computing and cryptography to provide theoretical support for Anza's technological innovations. This team's combination of engineering, research, and productization advantages makes Anza a technological pioneer in the Solana ecosystem.

In fact, prior to Alpenglow, last year's Anza was quite active. On January 30, 2024, Anza announced the development of Agave, a validator client, which is a project forked from the Solana Labs validator client aimed at maximizing network uptime and paving the way for the launch of other clients. Facing congestion issues encountered by the Solana network during rapid growth, Anza released a patch version V1.17.31 in April 2024 and plans to continue optimizing in subsequent V1.18 versions. They worked closely with core contributors to develop solutions to address bottleneck issues with the QUIC protocol and the Agave client under high loads.

The "Refugee Camp" of the Ethereum Foundation

The appeal of Anza lies not only in technological innovation but also in its magnet effect of attracting top talent. In December 2024, the highly anticipated Ethereum researcher Max Resnick in the blockchain field jumped ship to Anza. Resnick is renowned for his "sharp criticism" of Ethereum's scaling roadmap, believing that Ethereum relies too heavily on Layer-2 solutions and should focus on optimizing the base layer.

Encouraged by Solana co-founder Anatoly, Resnick, after three months of deliberation, finally chose to join Anza. His arrival was seen by the Solana community as a "major victory," with even Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin welcoming it, believing it will promote a collision of ideas between the two major ecosystems.

Related Reading: "Core Circle Researcher Talks ETH: It's Time to Redesign Ethereum's Roadmap｜In-Depth Interview"

At Anza, Resnick's goal is clear. In his first 100 days after joining, he focused on optimizing Solana's fee market and consensus mechanism while delving deep into the core protocol operation. He proposed a "moonshot plan" — to introduce a "multi-leader" mechanism to break the current Solana and Ethereum single leader proposal block model.

Ethereum researcher Max Resnick, image source from Blockworks

Resnick believes that a single leader holding too much economic power leads to protocol inefficiency, while a multi-leader competitive mechanism will reduce the extraction of economic value and significantly improve network efficiency. He openly admits that Solana's culture is more open and willing to embrace non-traditional ideas, while Ethereum often stagnates due to "political resistance." Resnick even bluntly states: "Ethereum's culture is deeply influenced by core developers, and those who want to get things done have to adjust their ideas to maintain their political capital." This cultural difference has led him to choose Solana, believing that it is more suitable here to realize his technical vision.

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