Anza Introduces New Block Propagation Protocol Rotor in Solana Alpenglow Upgrade

Solana ecosystem development company Anza announced on Twitter the introduction of a new block propagation protocol called Rotor in the Solana Alpenglow upgrade. Rotor replaces Turbine's multi-hop mode with a single-layer relay, where leaders slice blocks, perform erasure coding on each slice into fragments, and send these fragments to selected relays. Relays then broadcast fragments to all global validators within one round. Due to erasure coding, receiving half the fragments can reconstruct a slice, ensuring resilience and allowing relays to forward data with a single packet. Rotor can balance bandwidth usage between nodes, reduce propagation time and differences, enabling almost all validators to receive blocks simultaneously, thereby improving throughput and reducing fork risks. This is significant for builders and validators, as it can lower latency, stabilize confirmations, make real-time dApps run more smoothly, and reduce missed slots and bandwidth waste. In summary, Rotor's single-layer design allows Solana to quickly distribute large block data, achieving faster, more consistent block times and higher throughput. Previously, Anza proposed the Alpenglow protocol, which aims to replace Solana's TowerBFT consensus mechanism and historical proof timestamp system, introducing Votor and Rotor components. Votor is responsible for voting and block finality, while Rotor enhances Solana's existing block propagation protocol.