Anza, a company dedicated to Solana development, has unveiled a new block propagation protocol called Rotor as part of the Alpenglow upgrade. This single-layer repeater system replaces the multi-hop Turbine protocol, aiming to accelerate and streamline network block delivery.
Rotor works by fragmenting blocks, encoding them into shards, and broadcasting these shards globally through repeaters. This process ensures that blocks can be reconstructed with just half of the necessary shards, reducing latency and balancing bandwidth usage. The protocol significantly decreases propagation time and variability, allowing validators to receive blocks simultaneously for improved throughput and reduced fork risk caused by slow delivery or network delays.
For developers, Rotor simplifies the deployment of real-time decentralized applications (DApps). For validators, it minimizes missed slots, reduces wasted bandwidth, and provides a more predictable network load.
Previously, Foresight News reported that Anza released a white paper outlining the Alpenglow protocol, which aims to replace Solana’s TowerBFT consensus mechanism and proof timestamp system with the Votor and Rotor components.