Solana Alpenglow Upgrade Activates Oct 21, Cutting Finality to 150ms

Finality is the metric that decides whether Solana can credibly host latency-sensitive RWA and payments flows, so a drop to 150ms matters more for institutional use cases than for retail trading. The staked-SOL threshold for switching to Votor is the real gate: activation is not the same as the upgrade taking effect, and validator participation becomes the variable to watch. Rotor's missing date leaves block propagation as the unresolved piece, so whether the finality gain holds under load remains the open question.