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

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

· Innovation of Votor Consensus Mechanism: Votor replaces TowerBFT, adopting a more efficient direct communication model to accelerate block confirmation through a parallel voting mechanism. When 80% of the staked nodes agree, a block can be confirmed in one round; when the staking ratio is 60%, two rounds of confirmation are required. This design reduces block processing time to 100-150 milliseconds, significantly enhancing transaction speed and network scalability.

**· Rotor Block Propagation Optimization: Rotor has improved the Turbine system to improve block propagation efficiency through single-layer relay nodes and staking-based bandwidth optimization. Combined with erasure coding, Rotor ensures that block data can be quickly distributed and reconstructed from partial data fragments, further enhancing the performance and stability of the Solana network.

How big of a deal is it to change the Consensus Mechanism?

The consensus mechanism is the core pillar of blockchain technology, directly determining the network's security, efficiency, and degree of decentralization. Its transformative significance is a milestone in the history of blockchain development. Solana's existing TowerBFT consensus mechanism is known for its high throughput, but with the rapid expansion of the network scale, it faces challenges of transaction congestion and resource allocation efficiency.

Anza's Alpenglow project aims to completely reshape Solana's Consensus Mechanism by introducing the Votor and Rotor components, addressing these pain points and further unlocking the network's potential. Anza core team members Quentin Kniep, Kobi Sliwinski, and Roger Wattenhofer stated in the white paper: "The release of Alpenglow will be a turning point for Solana; it is not only a new consensus protocol but also a key step for Solana towards competitive capabilities at the level of internet infrastructure."

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 optimizes the block proposal and validation process, reducing transaction latency, but also enhances the network's level of decentralization and resistance to attacks by redesigning the economic incentive mechanism.

More importantly, it opens up new possibilities for Solana. It supports higher transaction throughput, lower fees, and a broader range of application scenarios, leading to a comprehensive explosion from DeFi to Web3 applications. The success or failure of this transformation will directly determine whether Solana can gain an advantage in the competition with Ethereum and even challenge the status of traditional internet infrastructure. As Anza envisions, Alpenglow is not just a technical upgrade, but aims to make Solana the cornerstone of the next generation of the internet, redefining the role of blockchain in the global digital economy.

Alpenglow launch event site, image source from X

Originating from the core circle of the Solana Foundation, what is Anza's background?

The story of Anza begins within the core circle of Solana Labs, a company spun off by executives and core engineers of Solana Labs in 2023. As the original developers of the Solana Blockchain, Solana Labs focused on the underlying design of the protocol and early expansion of the ecosystem. However, with the rapid growth of the Solana network, the surge in transaction volume and the issue of network congestion became prominent, highlighting the need for a more agile and focused entity to tackle technical challenges and accelerate innovation.

Anza was born out of the need to create a next-generation developer hub centered around Solana, focusing on core engineering, validator client optimization, and the extensive application of the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), thereby promoting the long-term development and competitiveness of the ecosystem without dispersing the core resources of Solana Labs.

The Anza 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 with many years of experience in distributed systems and high-performance computing, having led core protocol optimization work at Solana Labs, skilled at translating complex technology into practical solutions. Kobi Sliwinski is known for his expertise in consensus mechanisms and network architecture design, having contributed key code to the development of TowerBFT in the early days of the Solana ecosystem. Roger Wattenhofer, as a researcher with profound influence in both academia and the blockchain industry, provides theoretical support for Anza's technological innovations with his extensive experience in distributed computing and cryptography. This team's combination integrates multiple advantages of engineering, research, and productization, making Anza a technological pioneer in the Solana ecosystem.

In fact, before Alpenglow, Anza was quite active last year. On January 30, 2024, Anza announced the development of the Agave validator client, a project forked from the Solana Labs validator client, aimed at maximizing network uptime and paving the way for the launch of other clients. In the face of congestion issues encountered by the Solana network during rapid growth, Anza released patch version V1.17.31 in April 2024 and plans to continue optimization in the subsequent V1.18 version. They are working closely with core contributors to continuously develop solutions to bottleneck issues regarding the QUIC protocol and Agave client under high load.

Ethereum Foundation's "Refugee Camp"

The appeal of Anza lies not only in technological innovation but also in its magnetic effect of attracting top talent. In December 2024, Max Resnick, a prominent Ethereum researcher in the blockchain field, switched to Anza. Resnick is well-known for his "sharp critiques" of the Ethereum 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, ultimately chose to join Anza. His arrival is seen as a "major victory" by the Solana community, and even Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin welcomed it, believing it will facilitate a clash of ideas between the two ecosystems.

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

At Anza, Resnick's goals are clear. In the first 100 days after joining, he focused on optimizing Solana's fee market and consensus mechanism while delving into the core operations of the protocol. He proposed a "moon landing plan" - introducing a "multi-leader" mechanism to break the current model of a single leader proposing blocks for both Solana and Ethereum.

Ethereum researcher Max Resnick, image source from Blockworks

According to Resnick, having a single leader with too much economic power leads to inefficiencies in the protocol, while a multi-leader competitive mechanism would reduce the extraction of economic value and significantly enhance network efficiency. He admitted that Solana's culture is more open and willing to embrace unconventional ideas, whereas Ethereum often stagnates due to "political resistance." Resnick even bluntly stated: "Ethereum's culture is heavily influenced by core developers, and those who want to get things done have to adjust their thinking to maintain political capital." This cultural difference prompted him to choose Solana, believing it is more suitable for realizing his technological vision.

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