Solana Community Approves Alpenglow Upgrade

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap of an important tales in cryptocurrency tech improvement. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, a reporter at CoinDesk.

In this problem:

• Solana Set for Major Overhaul After 98% Votes to Approve Historic ‘Alpenglow’ Upgrade
• Ethereum Foundation to Unload Another 10K ETH Following SharpLink Deal
• ‘OP_CAT Isn’t My Invention. It’s Satoshi’s,’ Says Bruce Liu as OPCAT_Labs Pushes to Reboot Bitcoin’s Code
• Ethereum to Close Its Largest Testnet, Holesky, After Fusaka Upgrade

Network News

ALPENGLOW APPROVED BY SOLANA COMMUNITY: The Solana neighborhood voted overwhelmingly in favor of the long-awaited Alpenglow improve, bringing the community one step nearer to essentially the most vital technical transformation in its historical past. According to Solana Status on X, 98.27% of SOL stakers that voted authorized the proposal, with just one.05% voting in opposition to and 0.36% abstaining. In complete, 52% of the community’s stakers participated within the vote. The improve introduces a brand new consensus protocol designed to dramatically enhance transaction finality and community effectivity. At the center of Alpenglow are two new elements, Votor and Rotor, which is able to exchange Solana’s current techniques, Proof-of-History and TowerBFT. Currently, Proof-of-History timestamps transactions to protect their order with out slowing the community, whereas TowerBFT handles the voting course of amongst validators. Alpenglow will overhaul each techniques. Votor will slash transaction finality instances from over 12 seconds to round 150 milliseconds, delivering near-instant affirmation for customers. Rotor, scheduled for a later rollout, will decrease knowledge transfers between validators, a vital enchancment for high-demand functions similar to decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain-based gaming.With approval secured, Solana is now getting ready to implement the improve, a milestone anticipated to unlock larger velocity, resilience, and scalability throughout its ecosystem. — Margaux Nijkerk Read extra.

EF TO SELL 10K ETH OVER NEXT FEW WEEKS: The Ethereum Foundation (EF) shared in a put up on X on Tuesday that it plans to promote 10,000 ETH via centralized exchanges over the subsequent a number of weeks to assist work towards analysis & improvement, ecosystem grants and associated donations. According to CoinMarketCap, the ETH will quantity to roughly $43 million at Tuesday’s costs. “Conversions will take place over multiple smaller orders, rather than as a single large transaction,” the EF wrote within the put up on X.The information follows the EF’s rollout of a brand new treasury coverage in June that caps annual operational spending (opex) at 15%, establishes a multiyear reserve buffer and units a gradual tempo towards even leaner spending long-term. The basis bought a further 10,000 ETH to SharpLink Gaming in July, making the net on line casino advertising agency the primary publicly traded firm to purchase ETH from a key agency within the community’s ecosystem. — Margaux Nijkerk Read extra.

A CHAT WITH BRUCE LIU ON OP_CAT: Without OP_CAT, Bruce Liu says Bitcoin is as “useful as a jumbo jet without wings” able to rather more than it’s allowed to do, however caught on the bottom whereas Ethereum and Solana soar. Liu, the founding father of OPCAT_Labs, says a single opcode, OP_CAT, may remodel bitcoin from static digital gold into programmable cash that rivals different layer-1 chains. OP_CAT is a long-disabled opcode in Bitcoin’s code that, if re-enabled, would permit builders to concatenate knowledge in scripts and unlock new potentialities, from vaults and covenants to decentralized exchanges and zero-knowledge proofs. The Bitcoin blockchain, if OP_CAT was re-enabled, can be as programmable as Ethereum or Solana, mentioned Liu. “OP_CAT is not new code. It was never deleted, just commented out and disabled. We are not adding my opcode or somebody else’s. It’s Satoshi’s,” Liu told CoinDesk during an interview on the sidelines of BTC Asia in Hong Kong. — Sam Reynolds Read more.

HOLESKY SUNSET IS COMING AFTER FUSAKA UPGRADE: A fresh slate of Ethereum testnets is replacing Holesky, the once-massive staging ground now set for shutdown after two years of service.The wind-down will occur two weeks after the Fusaka upgrade is finalized later this year, at which point client and infrastructure teams will cease providing support. Fusaka is set to make Ethereum rollups cheaper and faster by spreading out the “data storage work” more evenly across validators. Holesky went live in 2023 to stress-test Ethereum’s proof-of-stake machinery at scale. It quickly became the largest public testnet, providing thousands of validators with a platform to trial upgrades before they were deployed on the mainnet. Major milestones, such as the Dencun and Pectra upgrades — which lowered transaction costs and upgraded validator efficiency, among other features — were run through Holesky first. However, cracks began to appear as the network aged. Holesky encountered “inactivity leaks” after Pectra’s activation in early 2025, a term referring to validators going offline in large numbers, which created a significant backlog for those attempting to exit. The result was months-long queues that made it impractical to test the full validator lifecycle. For developers needing fast feedback loops, Holesky had become more of a roadblock than a tool. — Shaurya Malwa Read extra.

In Other News

• Digital asset investment firm Galaxy Digital (GLXY) is bringing its stock onto blockchain rails as equity tokenization gains steam.The Nasdaq-listed company is working with blockchain firm Superstate to make its Class A common stock available as tokens on the Solana network through Superstate’s Opening Bell platform. The arrangement preserves the full rights of SEC-registered equity while allowing investors to hold and transfer shares on-chain, the firms said. Tokenization of traditional assets has gained traction across the financial sector as firms experiment with moving equities, bonds and money-market funds onto blockchain infrastructure. A slew of tokenized equity products hit the market in the past few months predominantly for EU investors, including by Robinhood, Gemini with Dinari and xStocks by Kraken and Backed Finance. However, some offerings drew concerns such as limited shareholder rights and fragmented regulations. Unlike synthetic or wrapped tokenized stocks that operate without issuer involvement, Galaxy’s shares are issued directly on-chain and tracked by Superstate as a transfer agent, recording changes to the shareholder register instantly as tokens move between verified wallets. This approach seeks to combine compliance with blockchain features such as fast settlement, transparency and around-the clock-availability, the firms said. — Kristzian Sandor Read more.
• Ondo Finance launched its tokenized equity platform dubbed Ondo Global Markets, offering non-U.S. investors access to more than 100 U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on-chain. The tokenized equities, first announced in February, have gone live on Ethereum and are backed by securities held by U.S.-registered broker-dealers, the firm said.The offering includes crypto token versions of Apple (AAPL), Nvidia (NVDA) and the QQQ ETF among others. Investors in Asia-Pacific, Europe, Africa and Latin America can mint and redeem shares around the clock during trading days, with access to underlying exchange liquidity. The service is not available for U.S. users. The tokens are designed to move freely between wallets, exchanges and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. The firm has also partnered with BitGo, Ledger, Chainlink and other infrastructure providers to support the rollout.— Kristzian Sandor Read more.

Regulatory and Policy

• European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde urged European Union (EU) lawmakers to impose stringent requirements and safeguards on foreign stablecoins.
• Lagarde argued they should comply with the bloc’s regulatory standards before operating on EU soil, she said in a speech at a European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) conference in Frankfurt. The ECB president cautioned that during a stablecoin run, investors would be more likely redeem in jurisdictions with stronger protections, such as the EU, where Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation prohibits redemption fees, potentially depleting local reserves. “The threat of liquidity mismanagement throughout jurisdictions is one we now have seen earlier than. Banking teams, for instance, are already required to make sure that reserves can be found within the a part of the group the place and when they’re wanted,” Lagarde said. — Jamie Crawley Read More.
• The U.S. government has begun using blockchains to disseminate key economic data, starting with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s release of gross-domestic product (GDP) numbers, which was described as a “proof of idea” for doing more in the future. “We are making America’s financial reality immutable and globally accessible like by no means earlier than, cementing our function because the blockchain capital of the world,” Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said in a statement that announced the new approach to distributing the data. In a deliberate effort not to pick blockchain favorites, the department put out last week’s data on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, TRON, Stellar, Avalanche, Arbitrum One, Polygon PoS and Optimism, identifying the transaction hashes for each in its announcement. The agency said it also sent the data through Chainlink and Pyth and noted that exchanges Coinbase, Gemini and Kraken helped out.— Jesse Hamilton Read more.

Calendar

• Sept. 22-28: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
• Oct. 1-2: Token2049, Singapore
• Oct. 13-15: Digital Asset Summit, London
• Oct. 16-17: European Blockchain Convention, Barcelona
• Nov. 17-22: Devconnect, Buenos Aires
• Dec. 11-13: Solana Breakpoint, Abu Dhabi
• Feb. 10-12, 2026: Consensus, Hong Kong
• Mar. 30-Apr. 2: EthCC, Cannes
• May 5-7, 2026: Consensus, Miami