Solana: Alpenglow lands today

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Market News

News: Alpenglow lands today

CoinDesk: Solana sets Oct. 21 for Alpenglow

Replaces TowerBFT in epoch 1064, est. ~7:20 AM CDMX
Finality: ~12.8 s today, ~150 ms target
Switches at slot 459,653,000 after ~18 min

Why it matters

Near-instant settlement, e.g. instant point-of-sale confirmation (Solana)
Merchants and bridges can act on payments sooner (CoinDesk)
Votes leave blocks: ~1 SOL/epoch vote fees become a flat 0.8 SOL (Solana)

For analysts: votes leave blocks, so TPS drops; expect a ~2-slot gap. Check getAgGenesisCert. More: CoinDesk · Triton guide

Source: Solana Foundation

News: USDC: the EU's first "significant" stablecoin

Cointelegraph: EBA labels USDC a significant e-money token

First of 45 e-money tokens to get the MiCA label
EBA supervises reserves, liquidity, redemption plans from Nov 12
France's ACPR keeps governance; EBA signed an MoU with NY DFS

For analysts: reviewed yearly, so EU holders, market cap and tx counts now count. Coverage: Cointelegraph

Source: EBA

Onchain Data News

News: Stablecoin payments +45%, supply +0.4%

Allium State of Stablecoins and Payments Q3 2026 report cover

Payments $482B through September; supply $305B
1.04B payments (+71%); average fell $544 → $462
Adjusted volume $2.4T (+48%); record $72B in September

For analysts: only 2.5% of $97.9T in raw transfers is end-user volume. Also: Bloomberg's Terminal dashboard on Allium data (Sep 30)

Source: Allium

News: AI agents are buying data onchain

Chainalysis 2026 North America report

138M+ x402 transactions on Base by July 1
87%+ of payments between $0.0001 and $0.10
Q3: 67% of new wallets paid within an hour (4% a year earlier)

For analysts: data and search APIs are among agents' top buys.

Source: Chainalysis

News: $102M Ledger reseller drain, traced across six chains

Bitquery investigation: Ledger CryptoBilis hack

$102.0M from 335 wallets, above the $86M first reported
25 TRON wallets signed one approval in 3 s, after test loops
Tether froze $10.0M; ~7,700 ETH went through Tornado Cash

For analysts: a model attribution write-up: method, limits, every address.

Source: Bitquery

News: Fact Sheets for 10,000+ tokenized assets

Token Terminal Fact Sheets

Issuer, law, regulator, custodians, redemption terms, reserves
Every term has a status and cited evidence
Query it as dimensions.asset_disclosures (docs)

Source: Token Terminal

Also: Helius preconfirmations now on all paid plans, plus four filters (Oct 16). Solana Compass

WizardCamp · Solana

Code WORLDSFAIR = 1 month of WizardCamp Pro free. Colosseum launch offer · first 50 users · until Oct 31 · new customers · then $15/month.

Chart: Solana vote vs non-vote transactions, Aug 24–30, 2026

Caption: Mainnet, Aug 24–30, 2026 (from the exercise)

Votes were 49% of Solana transactions, Aug 24–30
Unsplit "transactions per day" charts don't measure app activity
Puzzle: daily vote vs non-vote totals from blocks only

Catch: votes beat non-votes on 3 of 7 days.

blocks(slot, height, block_time, block_date,
  total_transactions, total_vote_transactions,
  total_non_vote_transactions,
  failed_non_vote_transactions)
-- expected: block_date | vote_transactions | non_vote_transactions

Try the exercise →

Watch

Vincent's 2-minute Colosseum pitch. Watch on YouTube

Chart of the Week, powered by Allium

Chart: Faster blocks, same user activity

Caption: Solana blocks/day vs non-vote txs/day · Sep 15 – Oct 20 · Allium Explorer

+23.2% blocks/day
−5.2% non-vote txs/day
85.5% → 87.9% success rate

Since 200 ms slots (Oct 9), blocks and votes rose ~23% but user activity didn't; Alpenglow pulls votes out of blocks next. (7-day averages, Oct 2–8 vs Oct 10–16, Oct 9 excluded.)

Pairs with the WizardCamp exercise above.

View on Allium →