Altcoin Network News, October 2026: Upgrades, Tests And Claims

From late September to mid-October 2026, nearly every major altcoin network shipped, tested or proposed a change. Solana and Ethereum moved big upgrades onto test networks, Arbitrum changed how transactions are ordered, Avalanche shortened staking for validators, Sui posted a speed record and a bitcoin bridge design, and NEAR debated cutting inflation. Meanwhile BitMine said it will stop buying ether at 5% of supply.

The theme: much of this is on testnets, in drafts or in companies’ own words. Each section gives the date, what changed, why it matters to a holder and the open question. Facts are as of 15 October 2026. Nothing here is a view on any token’s price.

When does Solana’s Alpenglow reach mainnet?

Not yet confirmed. Alpenglow replaces Solana’s on-chain vote transactions with direct validator votes, targeting finality of about 150 milliseconds versus about 12.8 seconds, a target derived from simulations, per the Solana Foundation. Activation on testnet began on 22 September 2026 and finished on 24 September, and devnet followed, CoinDesk reported.

A 28 September date that circulated online was a tentative schedule entry for feature activations, not a confirmed Alpenglow launch date, according to CoinDesk. Fees, transaction formats and the account model do not change, and simple apps need no migration.

Why it matters: once live, vote transactions leave blocks, so transaction-count charts will fall. The Foundation calls that “an accounting change, not a throughput regression”.

Open question: an official mainnet activation date. Solana’s changelog is the place to check.

What is set for Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade?

Only the first testnet. The Ethereum Foundation scheduled Glamsterdam on the Sepolia testnet for 6 October 2026 and said the post “does not schedule a mainnet upgrade”. Dates for the Hoodi testnet and mainnet “have not yet been decided”. Ethereum.org lists a Q4 2026 target with “date not yet confirmed”.

Glamsterdam bundles 18 changes, including enshrined proposer-builder separation (EIP-7732), block-level access lists and gas repricing. A 200 million gas limit seen in tests is a test setting; client releases defaulted to 60 million, per the EF.

Why it matters: these changes aim to raise capacity and remove trusted middleware from block building. Holders do not need to do anything with their ETH, and ethereum.org warns that “upgrade your ETH” messages are scams.

Open question: the Sepolia result write-up and a Hoodi date.

Why did Ethereum and Base split on account abstraction?

On 15 September 2026, Ethereum and Base developers stopped trying to align two smart-account proposals, EIP-8141 and EIP-8130, The Block reported. Ethlabs developer Derek Chiang said the options “required one side or the other to compromise”. CoinDesk reported wallet developers may need to support two native transaction formats.

Both are drafts. EIP-8141 aims at key rotation and a post-quantum path and is on the path to the Hegota upgrade after Glamsterdam. Base’s docs say its transaction type activates with a later upgrade, dates TBD.

Why it matters: smart accounts could make recovery and key rotation easier for ordinary users. Two standards mean more work for wallets.

Open question: whether wallets support both, and when either ships.

What replaced Timeboost on Arbitrum?

Priority Gas Auctions. Arbitrum’s docs say PGA has been enabled on Arbitrum One since 23 September 2026; CoinDesk gives 24 September. It replaces Timeboost, launched in April 2025, which gave auction winners a 200-millisecond head start.

Under PGA, transactions are ordered by priority fee within short rounds. According to the DAO proposal, 97% of priority fees go to the Arbitrum DAO treasury and 3% to a developer guild. The Arbitrum Foundation says PGA brought in more than $120,000 in its first week, its own figure and not a forecast.

Why it matters: ordering rules decide who gets filled first in a busy market, and where the fees go.

Open question: we could not load the final on-chain vote count.

What did the Solana Foundation launch for atomic settlement?

On 6 October 2026, the Solana Foundation launched Solana DvP, an open-source escrow program that swaps an asset and payment at the same time, so neither side delivers without the other. The Foundation says it is “ready for use with real funds” after external audits, and welcomes design partners ahead of a production release.

J.P. Morgan’s role was input only. The Foundation’s disclaimer says the bank is not designing, operating, approving, endorsing or guaranteeing it. TheStreet repeated the Foundation’s description.

Why it matters: delivery versus payment is how traditional securities settle. Issuers using Solana token tools can also keep powers such as a permanent delegate that can move tokens.

Open question: auditor names, audit reports and named users were not published.

What does Avalanche’s Helicon upgrade change for stakers?

Mostly validators. Helicon activated on mainnet on 22 September 2026 in AvalancheGo v1.15.0, per Avalanche’s docs. The minimum validator staking period fell from two weeks to 48 hours; the one-year maximum is unchanged. Delegators keep a two-week minimum, delegations can’t auto-renew, and 48-hour validators can’t receive delegations. Uptime requirements rise from 80% to 90% for new validations, with no slashing.

Rewards for the shortest commitments fall, phased in over 90 days; full-year rewards are unchanged.

Why it matters: if you delegate AVAX, your rules did not change much. If you run a validator, they did.

Open question: the related proposals, ACP-273 and ACP-285, still show “Proposed” while the docs say active, and lower delegation requirements remain an open idea.

What did Sui’s 40 million TPS test actually measure?

On 7 October 2026, Sui reported 40,614,180 transactions per second at Sui Basecamp in Singapore, in a press release. The release says “Both were measured inside Sui tunnels”: off-chain channels that need one transaction to open and one to close on the main chain. By our arithmetic from the release, 10,000+ tunnels means about 20,000 on-chain transactions. Sui’s earlier peak was about 6.09 million TPS in July, per Sui’s blog.

Sui also argues that one transaction can bundle up to 1,024 operations, so TPS undersells its work, per its throughput post. That is Sui’s argument.

Why it matters: channels are a real scaling method, explained on ethereum.org, but the 40 million figure is not main-chain capacity.

Open question: CertiK will publish a report on Sui’s data, the release says; none was found as of 13 October.

Who holds the bitcoin behind Sui’s hBTC?

A committee plus a guardian, per Mysten Labs’ design pages. On 8 October 2026, the Sui Foundation said Hashi mainnet will roll out in phases starting this month, with more than $500 million in “committed capital” from launch partners (a term it does not define), and added Anchorage Digital as a partner.

The guardian page says deposits are spent with a 2-of-2 multisig: a guardian, whose key sits in an enclave, plus an MPC committee. The committee page says it is a subset of Sui validators, and “more than 90% of Sui validators are expected to be members”. The committee alone can spend a deposit 60 days after confirmation.

Why it matters: hBTC holders depend on that signing setup, not on Bitcoin’s own rules.

Open question: no post saying mainnet is live as of 14 October, and limiter values were not published.

What happened at NEAR: an ETF, an exploit and an inflation draft?

Three things. On 29 September 2026, Bitwise’s NEAR ETF began trading on NYSE Arca; its filing names Coinbase Custody and says it intends to stake its NEAR. On 1 October, NEAR Intents lost about $3.8 million through a bug where deposit infrastructure met the Intents contract, pausing deposits and withdrawals on 11 networks for about 12 hours, crypto.news reported. NEAR’s leaders say the funds were returned; other accounts differ, so treat it as unsettled.

Separately, a draft proposal would cut NEAR’s maximum annual issuance from 2.5% to 1.6% over 24 months. House of Stake showed no active vote on 14 October, and any change also needs validator adoption.

Why it matters: issuance changes affect stakers’ share of the supply. More on the ETF in our NEAR ETF post.

Open question: whether the draft reaches a vote.

What is Hedera’s CLPR lab?

An early, open-source project. On 24 September 2026, Hedera said it contributed CLPR, developed by Hashgraph, to the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust as a “lab”. CLPR aims to connect ledgers using state proofs, without bridges, pooled liquidity or intermediary validators.

A lab is “a space to experiment, incubate ideas and build community”, per LF Decentralized Trust. The project’s GitHub says the spec will likely change. Hedera describes a three-phase early adopter program on a Hashgraph-hosted testnet before a full launch with no date.

Why it matters: removing bridges would remove a major source of losses, but this is not a product yet. Hedera’s post does not mention HBAR, fees or network changes.

Open question: we found no LFDT-authored announcement, audit or launch date.

What does BitMine’s 5% ether cap mean?

On 7 October 2026, Tom Lee said at TOKEN2049 that BitMine plans to stop buying ether at 5% of circulating supply, CoinDesk reported. That was a conference remark, not a filing. As of 11 October, BitMine reported holding 6,028,946 ETH, about 4.9% of roughly 122.1 million, with 5,067,309 staked, about 84%, The Block reported.

Why it matters: BitMine is a public company holding ether as a treasury asset. Its shareholders own company stock, not ETH, and its 10-K lists staking risks such as lock-ups, slashing and custodian failure. One large buyer stepping back is a supply-and-demand fact; we make no price call on it.

Open question: what BitMine does with staking rewards once at the cap.

What to watch next

• Solana’s official Alpenglow mainnet date.
• Glamsterdam’s Sepolia results and the Hoodi date.
• Sui Hashi’s mainnet notice and the CertiK report on the TPS test.
• A House of Stake vote on NEAR issuance.
• BitMine’s weekly holdings updates as it nears 5%.

Three labels for every network headline: testnet or mainnet, measured or projected, and network news or token news.