The wait is finally over. Full rules for the Alpenglow bug bounty competition are live. Submissions open on Wednesday (Aug 5th) for a total prize pool of up to 50,000 SOL. Details below:

Validators! Make sure to set your BLS pubkey on chain asap. The VAT feature activation is sometime this week. Also for anyone wondering will the VAT feature activation also enable full alpenglow consensus, please read 👇

Important update for validator operators. Solana mainnet validators can now register a BLS pubkey, a prerequisite for Alpenglow. This week, a second feature gate, the Validator Admission Ticket (SIMD-0357), goes live. Once VAT activates, validators without a BLS pubkey stop participating in consensus and stop receiving inflation rewards. Read more about the update and what you need to do here:

1/ Today, we’re excited to announce Solana Kit v7, adding two new features: - @solana/react a first-class React hook layer - @solana/transaction-introspection a package for turning RPC transaction responses into typed, parsable instructions. 🧵👇

Just completed the first fully-verified Horizon epoch file (solana epoch 950) 1 TB of transactions + status meta + 9 TB account updates compressed down to 203 GB Fully seekable by slot, 203k TPS sequential read, ~3M TPS parallel read (jetstreamer-style) More coming soon 🔥🔥🔥

100M CU blocks need @solana validators relaying shreds faster than they do today. XDP is how they get there: it speeds up Turbine's outbound propagation 750x, ensuring every block reaches the whole cluster before the next slot starts. We moved our entire fleet to XDP, and to help other operators get there, we upstreamed two patches to @anza_xyz's Agave, removing common adoption blockers: → VLAN tagging in userspace for segmented datacenter networks. Operators who split traffic across VLANs can now turn on XDP without the switch dropping their shreds → Multicast MAC derivation unlocks multicast retransmit on XDP for group sends. Useful on @DoubleZero and anywhere per-peer duplication isn't viable If there's a validator you'd like to see on XDP, tag them below👇

Agave 4.0 is now recommended for mainnet validators. Here are the most important updates: - XDP for Turbine (retransmit 600ms → ~0.8ms) - Faster replay stage with async verification - P-Token and Stake Program v5 activation Read the full blog:

1/ Agave 4.0 is now recommended for mainnet validators. XDP for Turbine, QUIC-only TPU ingestion, faster replay stage, and a long list of feature-gated SIMDs activating during the cycle. Here's what's changing 🧵

Slept 7h+ for the first time in weeks. Woke up feeling fresh and energized. Step out onto the terrace. It's warm and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. What a beautiful sunday. Coffee time. I live for this moment. That first sip in the morning. Life is amazing. Open the laptop. Agave 4.0 is rolling out, let's take a quick look at metrics. Looking great. This release really is something. The big validators are upgrading, all the key metrics are visibly improving even though we're only at ~25% adoption. Vibes are immaculate. Not a drop of cortisol in my blood. What a day. Oh right, the testnet XDP thing. A week ago, we asked everyone on testnet to turn XDP on so we can run some stress tests. Let's see how that's going. ... Only 80 of you have turned it on. I'm going to crash out. We ask you to do one thing. One command. It takes one minute and you don't do it. What is wrong with you. The cluster limit should be 100 nodes we don't need more and you can't change my mind. TURN THE THING ON OH MY GOD IT TAKES ONE MINUTE WHY DON'T YOU WANT TO WIN

Solana Kit 6.9 is out. This version adds fixed-point number support and a first-class Sol type. Exact decimal and binary math in JS for token balances, prices, anywhere rounding errors are unacceptable. Plus more shipped in this release 👇

How does rewriting a single program recover 12-13% of Solana’s global block space? We sat down with @0x_febo to discuss the origins of the Pinocchio library, the shift to zero-copy, and the relentless engineering behind P-Token. Read the full interview:

Validators: SIMD-0266, which replaces the current SPL token program with a new compute optimized version called p-token, is now live on mainnet at epoch 971. This feature requires at least Agave v3.1.7 and FD v0.812.30108