# Jito Sets Validator Requirements Before Solana’s Alpenglow Upgrade

By Simon Yoon

Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/technology/29301
Published: 2026-10-09T23:10:59.000Z
Updated: 2026-10-09T23:10:59.000Z
Section: Technology

> BAM nodes will temporarily fall back to the standard Jito-Agave Block Engine, disabling Multi-Packet Processing and Dynamic Block Incentives during maintenance.

Jito has outlined validator software and maintenance requirements for Solana’s planned Alpenglow mainnet upgrade, a transition designed to reduce block finality while temporarily limiting some BAM functions.

Jito listed Jito-Solana v4.3.0-jito.0, Agave v4.3.0-jito and Firedancer/FireBAM v26.09.5 for the transition.

Several days before Alpenglow mainnet activation, Block Assembly Marketplace nodes will enter maintenance mode and temporarily use the standard Jito-Agave Block Engine. Bundled transactions are expected to continue operating, while Multi-Packet Processing and Dynamic Block Incentives will be unavailable.

Jito has not confirmed the Alpenglow mainnet activation epoch or the start and end dates for the maintenance period.

At the end of Epoch 1050, BAM accounted for 164 million Solana (SOL) delegated across 385 validators, representing about 37% of Solana’s total stake. FireBAM accounted for an additional 7.3 million SOL across 12 validators.

Jito also reduced BAM’s auction cadence from 25 milliseconds to 20 milliseconds to match Solana’s shorter slot time. Solana’s slots fell from 400 milliseconds to 200 milliseconds at the start of Epoch 1053 on Oct. 9 at about 10:35 a.m. ET (14:35 UTC).

The slot-time change is separate from Alpenglow. The planned consensus upgrade is intended to replace Solana’s TowerBFT voting layer with Votor and reduce finality from about 12.8 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds. Transaction execution, programs and fees are otherwise unchanged by the consensus transition.

Jito-Solana v4.3.0-jito.0 is a stable release for testnet, devnet and Mainnet Beta and incorporates upstream Agave v4.3.0. BAM’s September technical update identified AgaveBAM v4.3.0 as the minimum version for Alpenglow support.

Solana has not provided a confirmed mainnet activation date. Earlier testing and migration work is covered in [previous Alpenglow coverage](<https://www.tokenpost.com/news/technology/27606>).

## Links in this article

- [previous Alpenglow coverage](https://www.tokenpost.com/news/technology/27606)