Solana May 2025 Update

Momentum Metrics

Market positioning reflects bullish sentiment onchain. SOL collateral deposited on Kamino remains near all-time highs at 5.1M SOL ($800M), while stablecoin borrows on the main market reached a new all-time high of $360M on May 21, 2025. As of June 2, 2025, there is about $231M worth of stablecoins borrowed against SOL collateral on Kamino, suggesting that investors remain leveraged long SOL on the money market.

Network Health

Alpenglow

Anza unveiled Alpenglow during Solana Accelerate, a new consensus protocol for the network. The headline impact of Alpenglow is a 100x reduction in Solana's finality time, from ~12.8 seconds to around 150ms (median), although finality can be achieved as quickly as 100ms. 

In January 2024, four researchers from ETH Zurich published a paper titled "Halting the Solana Blockchain with Epsilon Stake," highlighting various vulnerabilities with Solana's consensus protocol. After its publication, Toly reached out to the authors, asking if they wanted to help improve Solana. Eventually, the group joined Anza, helping shape Alpenglow – the biggest change to Solana's core protocol ever.