Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade is approaching a planned Sept. 28 activation, subject to validators representing 95% of staked SOL upgrading their software. Developed by Anza, the overhaul would replace the TowerBFT consensus engine with Votor, move validator voting offchain, reduce transaction finality from about 12.8 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds and raise the fault-tolerance threshold from 33% to 40% of staked validators. Public-testnet and devnet transitions demonstrated the protocol, but sustained mainnet performance remains unproven, and Firedancer and Frankendancer still require Votor support. U.S. Solana ETFs attracted a record $188.21 million in net inflows between Sept. 21 and 25, 2026, including $86.67 million on Friday, marking their strongest weekly performance since launching late last year. All seven funds posted positive flows. Bitwise’s staking-enabled BSOL led with about $128.46 million, or 68% of weekly inflows, while Grayscale attracted about $28.06 million. Thirty-day inflows reached $447.7 million, cumulative inflows exceeded $1.61 billion and the products recorded 12 consecutive weeks of positive flows. SOL traded at $123.66, up 2.39% over 24 hours and 14.75% over seven days, as upgrade expectations, recent price rallies and institutional demand supported the move.