'Solana's greatest advantage lies in its versatility, capable of supporting multiple different types of applications and domains simultaneously.' — Lily Liu, Chair of the Solana Foundation
Many relationships in the world resemble a seesaw. While ETH's price is recovering for its tenth anniversary, SOL is experiencing some anxiety—its path as an 'Ethereum killer' has become more challenging, and it faces a new wave of its own 'killers'—it feels somewhat like the tides are turning.
However, a moderate level of anxiety is not a bad thing for individuals or projects. For the battle-hardened Solana, it is even more adept at handling such situations. In this article, we intend to help you understand some recent significant moves by Solana's official team and delve into the current landscape and future outlook of Solana AI.
Alpenglow is considered the most significant upgrade to the Solana core protocol to date, comparable in significance to Ethereum's transition from PoW to PoS consensus, as Alpenglow's mission is to replace the existing PoH (Proof of History) and Tower BFT (Tower Byzantine Fault Tolerance) consensus mechanisms.
Why replace the existing formula mechanisms?
In the past, PoH significantly simplified block synchronization time for Solana, allowing it to lead all public chains in performance, as it did not require timestamp synchronization like other blockchains, and Tower BFT adopted a 'one person packages, others vote' approach. However, this structure led to enormous computational overhead during high loads, and combined with the single leadership overload issue of Tower BFT, resulted in the frequent downtime problems that Solana has been criticized for.
Additionally, one point that Solana is often criticized for is the high operational costs of nodes, leading to insufficient decentralization.
How does Alpenglow improve things?
In simple terms, Alpenglow removes PoH, a potential performance killer, using Votor (stake-weighted voting) combined with node clocks to handle time ordering and confirmations, reducing the computational burden on leadership nodes; and addresses the drawbacks of single leadership by laying the groundwork for multiple leaders to propose blocks simultaneously in the future.
Another core component, Rotor, optimizes block propagation and synchronization, reducing block confirmation time from 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds. At the same time, Rotor reduces communication overhead and computational burden among nodes, allowing weaker nodes to participate efficiently, achieving 'performance upgrade without hardware upgrade.'
According to the validator yield calculator from Cogent Crypto, after the implementation of Alpenglow, the minimum staking amount required for validators to profit will decrease from 4,850 SOL (about $800,000) to 450 SOL (about $75,000).
Final expectations
The Alpenglow white paper states: 'Alpenglow will become a turning point for Solana; it is not just a new consensus protocol, but a key step for Solana towards competitive internet infrastructure.'
In simple terms: faster, more stable, cheaper, more scalable, and more decentralized, reclaiming the throne of performance and escaping the nightmare of downtime.
After announcing the Alpenglow upgrade, Solana Labs, in collaboration with several core development teams in the ecosystem such as Anza and Jito, released a more detailed roadmap for the 'Internet Capital Markets' (ICM).
Over the past few years, Solana has attracted a large number of users and DeFi market share due to its low cost and fast transactions. However, the trading-specific chain Hyperliquid has rapidly risen, capturing more than 70% of the on-chain contract market. The founder of Hyperliquid even publicly criticized Solana's speed as 'not fast enough.' This undoubtedly made Solana feel a sense of crisis.
Isn't Solana fast enough yet?
Currently, the final confirmation of transactions on Solana takes 12-13 seconds, Hyperliquid's average confirmation time is about 0.2 seconds, while SUI's is about 0.5 seconds.
It is expected that after the Alpenglow upgrade, Solana's confirmation time will reach 150 milliseconds, reclaiming speed advantages and achieving transaction confirmation capabilities at the Visa level, though still lagging behind Nasdaq's 'microsecond' high-frequency trading system.
What else do we need to do besides going faster?
Empowering dApps on the platform more—known as ACE (Application-Controlled Execution)—allows dApps (smart contracts) to decide their own transaction priorities, enabling dApps to be more flexible and powerful when handling complex issues.
Protecting market makers and addressing MEV (high-frequency arbitrage attacks like sandwich bots): Hyperliquid's order matching engine provides higher priority for market maker orders, shielding them from MEV attacks, allowing better pricing that attracts retail investors. The Solana ICM roadmap is similar; through the introduction of BAM and the completion of the Alpenglow upgrade, DEXs within the ecosystem will have the capability to address high-frequency arbitrage issues, enhancing market health and providing better prices for retail investors.
A more ambitious goal
In addition to aligning Hyperliquid in DeFi, Solana has an even more ambitious goal—truly establishing a 'chain-based Nasdaq'—to help more enterprises bypass complex IPO processes for on-chain financing.
Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, recently stated in an interview that he hopes to complete the onboarding of traditional financial assets (RWA) within a year and provide compliant, open-source on-chain IPOs for entrepreneurs within five years, ultimately creating an open, low-cost, decentralized internet capital market.
Ambitious enough, but it seems to be the goal of almost all leading public chains. Currently, we see Solana continuously striving for reform in various aspects such as underlying architecture, ultimate performance, and application scenarios. However, this strategy needs time and market validation to break through in this highly competitive era.
Public chains usually do not easily change consensus strategies, just as no one would casually change nationality or move their residence. Changes often stem from significant threats.
In terms of trading business on the core chain, whether it's Hyperliquid, as a trading-specific chain rapidly encroaching on Solana's advantages in the DEX perpetual contract market, or the emerging Sui, as a general-purpose chain chasing performance across multiple domains like DeFi and DeAI, coupled with hot topics like stablecoins, RWA, and micro-strategies pushing ETH back to the throne, Solana feels considerable pressure, forcing it to accelerate upgrades to reverse the situation.
The AI field, which Solana takes pride in, is also not looking optimistic. After the previous DePIN and AI Agent MEME boom subsided, the Virtuals ecosystem rapidly rose, allowing Base to gain an absolute advantage in the AI Agent field; BNB Chain, leveraging celebrity effects and exchange resources, diverted a large amount of attention from AI MEMEs. In terms of decentralized AI infrastructure, the rapid expansion of the Bittensor subnet and the rise of various AI Layer 1s are gradually forming a new force in the DeAI field.
In a short time, anxiety seems to have spread across various levels of the Solana chain, but the battle-tested Solana is clearly not one to easily give up. Currently, the Alpenglow upgrade seems poised to bring strong confidence to the ecosystem. At the very least, Solana's official team has shown enough humility and pragmatism, clearly benchmarking against competitors and gradually addressing shortcomings, and even aiming to be stronger.
Next, let's sort out Solana's AI ecosystem together and see if Solana's AI narrative can help it usher in a new round of prosperity.
The development time and breadth of AI projects on Solana is remarkable, and it is hard not to be amazed when counting them. We can roughly divide AI projects on Solana into three phases based on their development timeline.
The popularity of the DePIN concept has made Solana one of the first public chains to explore on-chain decentralized AI. These projects leverage Solana's powerful performance and low cost to build their own decentralized networks for computing power, bandwidth, data, etc., laying an early foundation for the Solana AI ecosystem.
In terms of AI computing networks, early projects like Render, io.net, and Aethir were among the first to attempt decentralized computing on-chain, though with different focuses.
These projects are among the early explorers of decentralized computing networks, having secured significant funding as early entrants favored by the market. However, these projects typically require high-performance GPUs to participate in the network, which poses a high barrier to entry for the average person.
In contrast, projects like Grass, Helium, Roam, and Gradient Network have a relatively strong grassroots base.
These projects have actively explored the infrastructure field combining blockchain and AI (such as bandwidth, data, computing power, etc.), not only bringing immense imagination and confidence to the market but also opening a new chapter in DeAI. Although the token prices of these projects have retreated from their peaks, the network effects are still evident, with many projects already establishing partnerships with traditional large companies, gaining recognition in the mainstream market.
With the significant advancements in LLM capabilities represented by ChatGPT, applications like AI Agents have rapidly developed over the past year. Solana, leveraging its exceptional performance and rich ecosystem, has become one of the first public chains to benefit from the prosperity of on-chain AI Agent tokens and related applications.
In addition, many well-known Agents and application projects emerged on the Solana chain during the AI hype earlier this year, such as the Agent framework $ARC, $SWARMS, the DeFAI platform $GRIFFAIN, $BUZZ, AI Agent launcher $HAT, well-known AI Agents $PIPPIN, $ZEREBRO, etc. However, after the hype faded, the prices and enthusiasm for these projects quickly declined, with some projects' developments stagnating.
As the market gradually returns to rationality, we notice that a new batch of projects has emerged on the Solana chain, washing away the noise of the AI MEME era, more solidly and feasibly building decentralized AI infrastructure on Solana.
Although the enthusiasm for Solana AI has declined in this phase, it carries a sense of survival of the fittest. The quality of projects has significantly improved—their implementation capabilities are stronger, and they solve more practical problems—evolving from 'dream speakers' to 'pragmatists'.

Through the above rough overview, we can see that the AI ecosystem on Solana has developed early, covering a wide range, and its comprehensive strength remains very competitive among existing public chains.
Alongside its comprehensiveness, many excellent projects have emerged within the Solana ecosystem. For example, Nous Research is dedicated to solving the decentralized large-scale training challenges of AI models, Grass collects massive training data through a decentralized network, and Arcium focuses on building privacy infrastructure. These projects often require proprietary chains to support their competitors, yet they thrive on Solana, fully demonstrating Solana's exceptional capacity.
Despite the current enthusiasm for on-chain AI being diverted to platforms like Base and BNB Chain, the long-term possibility of a single chain dominating the AI space is almost zero; cooperation between chains is more prevalent than competition. At the same time, with the Alpenglow upgrade, Solana's advantages in the AI field will be further reinforced.
1. Fast and cost-effective: Speed, throughput, and cost are the key factors for on-chain AI projects. Multiple AI Agents need to closely coordinate and transact under protocols like MCP; decentralized training and data collection also rely on frequent and fast interactions among nodes. Currently, Solana is very efficient, with confirmation times reduced to 150 milliseconds after the Alpenglow upgrade, further lowering latency and costs, better supporting real-time AI applications.
2. Good liquidity: As the currency of the project, the stability and smooth circulation of AI tokens have a significant impact on the project. Solana currently boasts an average daily DEX volume of $1.4 billion, ranking second in the entire network only after Ethereum, and has mature and active DeFi ecosystems like Raydium and Jito, allowing AI projects to easily access stable funding pools. The upgrade is expected to attract more market makers, providing deep liquidity to help AI tokens circulate and finance quickly.
3. Smart contract support: Solana supports parallel processing and more flexible development languages, and its virtual machine SVM can process complex logic more efficiently, suitable for the more complex on-chain executions required by AI tasks (like agent decision-making or data validation). After the Alpenglow upgrade, contract functionality will become more powerful and stable, making it easier for AI developers to build applications like prediction markets or automated training.
4. Decentralization: Although Solana has long been criticized for being 'not decentralized enough,' this is only in reference to Ethereum. Its current 2,000+ nodes far exceed many popular performance chains and proprietary chains. The Alpenglow upgrade is expected to lower operating costs, leading to more nodes joining and further enhancing decentralization, improving the AI ecosystem's resistance to censorship and global distribution.
5. Ecosystem synergy: As a general-purpose chain, Solana's ecosystem is more complete, diverse, and mature, facilitating cross-domain collaboration for AI projects, such as AI Agents utilizing the DePIN computing network for seamless interaction with on-chain RWA assets. A comprehensive ecosystem can easily empower AI projects.
In the crypto space, we are always particularly excited about the birth of narratives while feeling anxious about their demise. Solana, full of memes, is truly a master of narratives. 'Chain-based Nasdaq' and AI are undoubtedly its two most important narratives.
The arrival of the Alpenglow upgrade is highly anticipated. At that time, Solana, which once competed fiercely against Ethereum and the entire Layer 2 ecosystem, will become even stronger. But will it be strong enough to carry these two major narratives and compete with more general-purpose and proprietary chains? Perhaps only time will tell.
