Solana Rises to 6-Month High on Alpenglow Update Anticipation

• Solana Price Hits $215 on High Confidence
• Alpenglow update promises to reduce block times
• Positive sentiment grows despite decline in DeFi users

Solana's SOL token reached its highest value since February this week, fueled by anticipation surrounding the proposed Alpenglow upgrade. The asset traded above $215, rising more than 6% in just 24 hours, before retreating slightly to the $214 range.

According to market data, the move brought SOL back close to its February peak, when the cryptocurrency had reached $216. Santiment analysis showed that retail investor sentiment is strongly bullish, with nearly six positive mentions for every negative comment—the highest ratio in two months.

Despite the appreciation, activity on the network's DEXs shows weakening. Dune Analytics Data point out that the number of active traders has fallen by more than 80% since its peak in January, when around 5 million users traded daily, largely attracted by memecoins. For the past four days, that number has remained below 1 million.

The current enthusiasm is due to proposal SIMD-0326 Alpenglow , considered one of the most significant consensus changes in Solana's history. The update aims to simplify the protocol's architecture by removing legacy mechanisms such as Proof of History, Tower BFT, and gossip-based vote propagation.

If implemented, the change will reduce block completion time to approximately 150 milliseconds, putting the network on a competitive footing with other high-speed blockchains, especially for trading applications. Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, publicly encouraged the community to support the proposal, calling it a crucial step forward.

The first data Voting data indicate strong support: 11,6% of participants have already expressed support for Alpenglow, compared to just 0,1% against. More than 100 validators have registered votes so far.

The growing confidence around the proposal suggests that the community believes in Solana's ability to deliver superior performance, even amid the decline in user volume caused by the depletion of memecoin trading.