Solana’s upcoming Alpenglo upgrade could prove to be a turning point for the network’s staking economy. CoinDesk sat down with Michael Repetani, CEO of Marinade Labs, the firm that supports Solana’s liquid staking protocol Marinade, to discuss how the update aims to change the economics of running a validator on Solana, significantly lowering the barrier to entry.
As the Solana ecosystem prepares for an upgrade later this year or early 2026, Repetani shared his thoughts on how this change could expand validator participation and improve decentralization, even as higher hardware demands increase.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
CoinDesk: Talk to me about the state of Solana staking – in your opinion, what are the most pressing issues in the space right now?
Michael Repetani: So when we started Marinade, there were 700 validators on Solana, 11 of which were large enough to potentially choke the network.
Then we launched Marinade, during the first few years the number of validators grew to 2000 so it was looking great. Right now we are below 1000 validators active again on Solana.
I think there are other signs too [on the health of Solana staking]Another way to look at it is if you look at stake concentration, that is, if you get to lock down a third of that stake, Solana stops working.
To do this requires about 20 of the biggest violators right now, or it also requires two countries and it also requires two data centers. They’re like different ways of looking at it. So, this is not ideal.
We would rather see hundreds of poor quality validators than thousands of people just running potatoes.
And with ETFs and institutional interest, I think centralization is becoming a bigger risk.
At Marinade, we are striving to ensure that we have a viable option for validators to stake in a responsible manner.
A major upgrade is coming to Solana called Alpenglow. How will this impact the staking ecosystem?
We are hopeful, and this should have an impact on staking and validator economics. One proposed change is to cut down on vote fees for validators (vote fees are spent by validators when voting on SOL processing on the blockchain). So this is a huge deal, because right now, if you want to run a validator, to get started, you have to pay about $5,000 a month.
Of that $5,000, about $4,000 is spent on polling fees alone. So as you can see, vote fees account for 80% of the cost of building your validators today. Alpenglo aims to greatly reduce vote fees. This is extremely exciting, and should make starting your own validator more accessible as the costs will go down.
Will there be any changes to Solana validator rewards?
One way to look at this is to cut the costs of running validators. Alpenglow is really about increasing bandwidth and reducing latency.
We expect to see more saturated blocks when we pack them better, which should also improve the economics of validators from packing blocks.
Another benefit of this would be that if you increase bandwidth and reduce latency, there is less time for arbitrage and malicious maximum extractable value (MEV). This means that if there is less time to manipulate the order of transactions, less toxic and malicious MEV will occur, which is great for users.
Is there an agreement for validators with Alpenglow?
Hardware costs may eventually increase. There may be a greater need for final validators to ensure they are still connected to the network as more transactions occur. Maybe with more requirements on them, a compromise could be reached. Beyond that, I don’t know. There will be problems, but we will have to go there and see.
How does Alpenglow connect to Marinade’s mission?
This makes it more accessible to spin up more validators. The break-even threshold is very low.
So Alpenglow is coming at the end of the year or maybe early next year – will it really be a major change or just another upgrade? And where does Solana go after that?
This is one of the pieces that Solana needs to solve to remain competitive with things like Hyperliquid or decentralized exchanges.
Solana is working on fixing the protocol with Alpenglow, fixing the infrastructure with new projects like DoubleZero, fixing the software client, and optimizing Firedancer. Hopefully all those things are coming together now.
The six-month timeframe may not be enough to show results, but once it gets there, hopefully it will unlock use cases that aren’t currently available on Solana.
Hopefully, there will be more economic activity, which will lead to more revenue, and hopefully the pie will grow.
Read more: Solana set for major overhaul after 98% votes to approve historic ‘Alpenglow’ upgrade