Solana Alpenglow Upgrade Could Propel SOL to $250 By Year-End: Analyst

Solana is preparing to implement the Alpenglow upgrade, a proposal that would reduce transaction finality on the network to near-instant speed.

Filed as SIMD-0326 (Solana Improvement Document), the Alpenglow upgrade has already secured more than 99% validator support, according to data from Staking Facilities.

Once implemented, the proposal would cut transaction finality from over 12 seconds to just 150 milliseconds. If implemented as intended, it would deliver a hundred-fold speed increase and set a new benchmark for decentralized infrastructure.

Shawn Young, chief analyst at MEXC Research, notes that more than $1.7 billion in Solana is already locked in corporate treasuries, a metric that he said signals a shift from speculation to strategic accumulation as ETF prospects add momentum.

Given these factors, Young projected that SOL could reach $215 in September and $250 by year-end.

“The $215–$250 outlook is built on two key drivers, which are structural supply constraints from staking and sustained institutional adoption channels,” Young told Decrypt. “Solana continues to consolidate as the most reliable non-Ethereum layer-1 for capital markets infrastructure.”

The price trajectory “may flatten in the short run in this scenario, yet the medium-term thesis remains intact,” he added.

But while a Solana ETF approval “could accelerate the timeline toward that range,” a stall such as when the SEC punted on two key decision deadlines earlier this month “wouldn’t invalidate the outlook,” and instead “just push the horizon further out,” Young said.

On prediction market Myriad, users place a 64% chance on Solana’s next move carrying it to $250 (Disclaimer: Myriad is a prediction market launched by Decrypt’s parent company DASTAN).

Speed and promise

In web infrastructure, one common measure of a web application’s responsiveness is called Time to First Byte, which is the time it takes for a server to send the first byte back to a client.

For instance, on internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare’s global system of servers placed close to users, most requests return in just a few milliseconds. Those servers form its “edge” network, and are placed closer to cut latency by serving content nearer to users.

The 99th percentile latency is about 500 milliseconds, while the median is less than 10 milliseconds, according to research from Cloudflare.

By comparison, Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade, which would bring finality speeds to around 150 milliseconds, would be within the same range as common internet services.

This positions the network “not only ahead of rival layer-1 blockchains,” but also “potentially faster than a standard web search response time,” Young said in a separate statement shared with Decrypt, adding that such a technical milestone would make Solana more attractive to “high-frequency applications, payments, and large-scale decentralized finance infrastructure.”

The Alpenglow upgrade is tied to Solana’s status as a “strategic asset” where “institutions and treasuries start treating SOL less like a high-beta trading instrument and more like a long-term reserve or infrastructure play,” Young told Decrypt.

That kind of shift is apparent when “allocation strategies prioritize balance-sheet exposure,” where digital asset treasury firms set “bands that are rebalanced systematically, rather than opportunistically,” Young said.

“The move from speculation to strategy is about embedding SOL into treasury frameworks as a persistent asset, not just a cyclical trade,” he added.