Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade won overwhelming community approval, the Ethereum Foundation announced plans to sell 10,000 ETH, and Ethereum will retire its largest testnet, Holesky, after the Fusaka upgrade. Below are the key developments and what they mean for developers, users and markets.
Solana: Alpenglow moves forward. Solana stakers backed the Alpenglow proposal by a landslide — roughly 98.27% of votes cast — moving the network closer to a major consensus overhaul. Alpenglow replaces Proof‑of‑History and TowerBFT with two components called Votor and Rotor. Votor is designed to cut transaction finality from about 12 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds, enabling near‑instant confirmations. Rotor, to arrive later, aims to reduce validator data transfers and improve scalability for high‑traffic applications such as DeFi and blockchain gaming. For users this promises faster, more reliable confirmations; for developers it should ease pressure on infrastructure and open new high‑throughput use cases.
Ethereum Foundation to sell 10,000 ETH. The Foundation said it will sell 10,000 ETH over several weeks on centralized exchanges to finance research, grants and operations — roughly $43 million at recent prices. Conversions will be split into smaller orders rather than one large trade. While proceeds support ecosystem work, sales from a major stakeholder can influence market liquidity and sentiment; the staged approach is intended to limit disruption.
Bitcoin’s OP_CAT conversation. Developer Bruce Liu and OPCAT_Labs are advocating re‑enabling OP_CAT, a disabled Bitcoin opcode that would let scripts concatenate data and enable features like covenants, vaults and greater on‑chain composability. Liu emphasizes OP_CAT is legacy code from Bitcoin’s early days, not new functionality, and argues it could introduce more programmability without altering Bitcoin’s core design.
Holesky testnet to be retired. Ethereum’s Holesky will be wound down two weeks after the Fusaka upgrade is finalized. Holesky served as a large‑scale proving ground for upgrades like Dencun and Pectra, but persistent validator inactivity and long exit queues reduced its usefulness for fast iteration. Fusaka aims to lower rollup costs by spreading data storage work across validators; retiring Holesky lets client and infra teams concentrate on newer staging environments.
Source: CoinDesk. Read the original coverage for full details.