Whitepaper Reading Club - After Alpenglow
What's Next? With Alpenglow now live and targeting 150ms finality, what's next for Solana consensus? Constellation and Multiple Concurrent Proposers, Censorship Resistance?
Join Roger Wattenhofer and Quentin Kniep of Solana Foundation/Anza for a roundtable discussion on Constellation (Multiple Concurrent Proposers).
We'll explore how allowing multiple validators to propose blocks simultaneously could push the boundaries of consensus performance, improve resilience, and introduce new technical challenges. How far can Solana push the theoretical and practical limits of blockchain consensus?
Context:
Alpenglow: Solana's new consensus protocol, launched in October, targeting ~150ms finality.
Constellation (Multiple Concurrent Proposers): Architecture that allows multiple validators to propose transactions at the same time, improving censorship resistance, fairness, and market efficiency.
💡Session Guides
Professor of Distributed Computing at ETH Zurich, where he leads the Distributed Computing Group. Previously, worked at Microsoft Research, Brown University, and Macquarie University. 25+ in distributed algorithms and consensus, he has authored hundreds of academic publications and the book Blockchain Science: Distributed Ledger Technology. Recent research includes co-authoring Solana Alpenglow Consensus (2025) and Solana Constellation (2026).
Distributed systems and applied cryptography researcher at Anza and ETH Zurich. Designing next-generation consensus protocols for robust high-performance blockchains. Worked on Alpenglow and contributes to Agave (Solana) and Erigon (Ethereum). Worked on research including Solana's Constellation: Fair Internet Capital Markets (2026).
❤️ Moderator
DeFi Quant dev at Flow Traders, specialising in trading strategies, high-frequency trading, and blockchain infra. Previously, he worked at Selini on trading systems,Hyperlane, a permissionless cross-chain interop protocol, and Interlay on Bitcoin bridging and DeFi lending infrastructure. MSc in Advanced Computing from Imperial College London and a BSc in Computer Science from UCL.
Session Format
5 mins: Short intro from everyone
5 mins: Quiet Reading of Summary
10 mins: Guide Introduces Paper
45 mins: Q&A with moderator
Note: Space is very limited, first come first serve 🙏
About Whitepaper Reading Club
We are a community of founders, researchers, and builders across Singapore, Malaysia, San Francisco, Bangkok, New York, Lagos, Taipei, and Hong Kong. We meet in person every month to read, discuss, and pressure-test the latest blockchain papers, protocols, and technical ideas.
Learn more: Website · Summaries · Calendar
We create detailed, easy-to-understand summaries for each paper and have held 80+ sessions since June 2023, covering Account Abstraction, Parallel Chains, EIPs, the Bitcoin ecosystem, and AI x Crypto. We are ecosystem-agnostic, not for profit, and focused on projects with technical, product, or social innovation.