Avalanche activates Helicon upgrade, claims up to 100x faster block verification

Avalanche has flipped the switch on Helicon, a network upgrade that makes block verification up to 100 times faster. The upgrade went live on the Avalanche Mainnet on September 22, 2026, at 11 AM ET, delivered through AvalancheGo v1.15.0. This is not a cosmetic patch. Helicon bundles six Avalanche Community Proposals (ACPs) into one release, touching everything from how transactions get processed to how validators earn rewards. What Helicon actually changes The headline feature is Continuous Execution, formally known as ACP-194. It separates two jobs the C-Chain used to handle in lockstep: agreeing on blocks and executing the transactions inside them. In technical terms, consensus is decoupled from execution, so transactions can be processed asynchronously. The practical payoff is more throughput when the network gets busy. Early numbers suggest the change is working. Post-launch data shows per-block capacity has roughly doubled, giving the C-Chain 2x more headroom per block. Early reports also indicate the chain ran below its gas target for the first time in months. Gas pricing got its own overhaul under ACP-283. The minimum gas price is no longer a fixed number. It now follows a ...