Core Insights - Solana's native token, SOL, experienced a significant surge to an all-time high at the beginning of 2025 but ended the year in a slump, down substantially from the previous year [1] - The network made notable advancements, including technical improvements and the launch of a mobile phone, while also integrating more closely with traditional financial markets [1] Group 1: Market Performance - Following the launch of the TRUMP meme coin on January 17, 2025, SOL reached its latest all-time high of $293.31 on January 19, 2025 [3] - However, both TRUMP and SOL saw a decline in value after their peaks, with SOL dropping nearly 64% to $105.77 by April 6, 2025 [4] - As of December 15, 2025, SOL was trading at $127.70, over 56% off its all-time high, while TRUMP was down nearly 93% from its peak, trading at $5.33 [5] Group 2: Technical Developments - In May 2025, Solana introduced Alpenglow, a new consensus protocol aimed at enhancing network performance, improving transaction finality by at least 5 times [6] - In September 2025, Solana validators voted overwhelmingly (98% in favor) to implement the Alpenglow upgrade, which is expected to make applications more responsive and allow exchanges to process deposits more quickly [7]

🚨 UPDATE: Solana's SIMD-0326 Alpenglow voting process has started.The proposal aims to reduce block finality time from 12.8 seconds to 150ms through new consensus protocol changes. https://t.co/3rw3wxSL1w ...

Protocol Update - Alpenglow is a new consensus protocol for Solana, replacing Proof-of-History and TowerBFT [1] - Alpenglow aims to reduce block finality from 12800ms to 150ms, a reduction of approximately 988% [1]

Technology & Performance - Solana's new consensus protocol achieves 100x faster finality, reaching just 100 milliseconds, the fastest among Layer 1 blockchains [1] - Shred propagation speed is reduced to only 20 milliseconds, enabling faster pre-confirmations and advanced trading [1] - Validator profitability increases due to the removal of votes, contributing to higher Transactions Per Second (TPS) [1]