Solana Developers Begin Testing An Epochless Execution Model to Cut Network Congestion

Protocol Overhaul Targets Persistent Bottlenecks

Solana developers have launched testing for major execution improvements designed to eliminate the network congestion that has plagued the blockchain throughout 2024 and 2025.

The Alpenglow upgrade, described as Solana’s largest core protocol overhaul, aims to reduce transaction finality from approximately 12 seconds to just 150 milliseconds by moving validator voting off-chain, while the Firedancer validator client promises to enable over 1 million transactions per second in production environments.

The upgrades address persistent congestion issues that have caused transaction failure rates exceeding 75% during peak periods. According to CoinMarketCap’s analysis of Solana developments, these improvements represent fundamental architectural changes rather than incremental patches, with block capacity increasing 25% by year-end and sub-second finality potentially attracting institutional traders. Businesses managing operations through platforms enabling crypto for business transactions have faced intermittent reliability challenges on Solana during high-demand periods.

Solana currently trades around $135 on November 18, 2025, down approximately 54% from its January all-time high of $294. The network processes an average of 1,000-1,050 transactions per second on mainnet , though August 2025 stress tests demonstrated capacity exceeding 100,000 TPS using lightweight program calls. The gap between theoretical and realized performance underscores the congestion challenges developers are working to resolve.

Alpenglow: Off-Chain Voting Revolution

The Alpenglow consensus upgrade fundamentally restructures how Solana validators reach agreement on transaction ordering. Current architecture requires validators to broadcast votes on-chain, consuming significant block space and creating bottlenecks during periods of high activity. Alpenglow moves this voting process off-chain while maintaining cryptographic security guarantees, freeing capacity for user transactions.

The upgrade targets 150-millisecond finality, compared to the current 12-second average.

This 98.75% reduction in settlement time would enable Solana to support more demanding latency-sensitive applications, including high-frequency trading protocols, blockchain gaming, and real-time payment systems that require near-instant transaction confirmation.

Implementation carries risks, including potential validator decentralization tradeoffs during the transition period, as VanEck’s analysis notes. Moving consensus mechanisms off-chain requires new networking infrastructure and coordination protocols that must be validated extensively before mainnet deployment. The Solana Foundation has committed to phased rollouts with comprehensive testing on devnet and testnet environments before production activation.

Firedancer: Ground-Up Performance Redesign

Jump Crypto’s Firedancer validator client represents a complete rebuild of Solana’s validator software using different programming languages and architectural approaches. The project achieved over 1 million transactions per second per core in controlled test environments, demonstrating that Solana’s theoretical limits extend far beyond current mainnet performance.

Firedancer vs Agave benchmark performance. Source: Jump Crypto Lab Tests (2025)

Firedancer addresses bottlenecks in the existing Agave (formerly Solana Labs) validator client that have caused congestion during traffic spikes. The limitations stem partly from the QUIC transport protocol implementation, which lacks traditional congestion control mechanisms. According to Solana Foundation communications reported by The Block, developers identified these issues, but rapid demand growth exceeded expectations, exposing inadequacies before patches could be deployed.

The Frankendancer hybrid implementation, combining Firedancer components with existing Agave infrastructure, currently runs on 207 validators as of October 2025. This gradual integration approach allows real-world testing while maintaining network stability. Full Firedancer deployment is targeted for late 2025, with expectations that the performance gains will substantially reduce congestion even during extreme demand events like meme coin launches or major airdrops.

Client diversification provides additional resilience benefits beyond pure performance. A validator monoculture creates systemic risk where bugs in the dominant client can compromise the entire network. Firedancer’s independent codebase reduces this concentration risk while introducing competitive pressure that benefits both implementations through innovation.

Addressing QUIC Protocol Limitations

Solana’s congestion problems go beyond simple traffic spikes. The network uses a communication protocol called QUIC that was chosen for speed, but it has a critical weakness: when validators get overwhelmed with transaction requests, they start cutting connections randomly. Legitimate transactions get dropped alongside bot spam, with no way for the network to tell the difference.

Developer teams scrambled to address this throughout 2024. An April update included five separate fixes to improve how validators handle incoming traffic, but the results were disappointing, congestion barely improved. The core teams keep releasing incremental patches while the real solutions, the Alpenglow and Firedancer upgrades, remain months away from mainnet deployment.

The stake-weighted Quality of Service (QoS) system attempts to prioritize transactions from validators with higher stakes, theoretically improving throughput reliability. However, affiliated RPC providers often benefit disproportionately, creating an environment that feels chaotic and inequitable during high demand. Those managing assets through comprehensive digital wallet solutions have experienced variable transaction success rates depending on their RPC provider’s stake relationships.

Block Capacity Increases and Compute Limits

Solana raised its block compute limit from 50 million to 60 million units in a recent upgrade, enabling more complex transactions per block. The 20% capacity increase translates to approximately 1,700-1,800 TPS on mainnet, up from roughly 1,200 TPS previously. While significant, this improvement addresses symptoms rather than the root causes of congestion.

Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius Labs, noted the increase should lead to lower fees during steady traffic and improve consistency across the board. Events like major NFT launches or airdrops often push the network to its limits, and additional capacity helps handle those moments with less friction. However, bigger blocks require more powerful hardware from validators, raising concerns about centralization as hardware requirements increase.

Developer discussions have explored raising limits to 100 million or even 120 million compute units, though nothing has been finalized. Proposal SIMD-0286 suggests doubling capacity to prepare for much heavier use, but concerns about validator hardware requirements have slowed consensus. The balance between performance and decentralization remains a central tension in Solana’s development roadmap.

Priority Fee Market Evolution

Solana’s cheap fees are backfiring. Transactions typically cost a fraction of a cent, but when the network clogs up, users need to pay extra “priority fees” to jump the queue. The problem? Most apps haven’t built this feature in, so transactions just fail. Users pay pennies and get nothing.

Developers rolled out better fee tools earlier this year, but app builders largely ignored them. Until they don’t, Solana’s fee advantage becomes a weakness every time traffic surges.

The SIP-64 fee market proposal, introduced in Q1 2025, offers dynamic pricing and improved congestion control. Rather than requiring users to manually estimate appropriate priority fees, the system would provide better price discovery mechanisms that adjust automatically based on network conditions. Implementation remains under testing, with mainnet deployment contingent on comprehensive validation.

Platforms offering services to swap crypto between different assets have integrated priority fee optimization, automatically adjusting tips based on network congestion metrics. This automation improves transaction success rates but creates advantages for sophisticated users and applications over individuals manually configuring transactions. The evolution toward more intelligent fee markets represents essential infrastructure for Solana to handle sustained high demand.

Timeline and Implementation Challenges

Alpenglow testing is currently underway on devnet environments, with testnet deployment expected before year-end. Mainnet activation will require coordination across thousands of validators, each of which must upgrade software and potentially adjust hardware configurations. The Solana Foundation has emphasized that phased rollouts will prioritize stability over speed, with extensive monitoring at each stage.

Firedancer’s Frankendancer hybrid version demonstrates the project’s progress, but full deployment faces substantial validation requirements. Any consensus-layer changes carry catastrophic failure risks if bugs reach production, making conservative testing timelines appropriate despite community eagerness for performance improvements. Jump Crypto has committed significant engineering resources to the effort, with multiple independent security audits planned before recommending mainnet adoption.

The combined impact of Alpenglow and Firedancer could transform Solana’s congestion profile by Q2 2026, assuming implementations proceed without major setbacks. The 150-millisecond finality target and 1M+ TPS capacity would position Solana competitively against both traditional finance infrastructure and alternative Layer-1 blockchains. Those tracking crypto market prices should monitor whether these technical achievements translate to sustained adoption growth and higher token valuations.

However, execution risks remain substantial. Coordinating network-wide upgrades across a decentralized validator set proves challenging, particularly when changes affect consensus mechanisms. Historical precedent from other blockchains shows that ambitious upgrades frequently face delays and require multiple iterations before achieving production readiness. Solana developers’ willingness to acknowledge congestion as “tech debt” and invest in fundamental solutions rather than superficial patches indicates appropriate prioritization, but results will determine whether the strategy succeeds.