Out now: Stellar Core v15.4.0 + Horizon v2.1.0
Justin
Hello Developers,
This week, we released new versions of both Stellar Core and Horizon! You can find each on their respective release page, along with complete notes detailing changes and improvements. Just look for the "Latest release" tag:
Stellar Core: https://github.com/stellar/stellar-core/releases
Stellar Core v15.4.0 is a stability-focused release, but as always, we urge you to install it to keep your validator and the network as a whole as efficient and secure as possible. You can view the full list of changes in the release notes linked to above.
Horizon v2.1.0 comes with quite a few new features, including flags that allow Horizon operators to configure peer port and storage location and full support for Protocol 16. Granted, Protocol 16 won't really be accessible until the Stellar Core v16.0.0 release (which is next on the docket) and the subsequent network protocol upgrade, but if you install Horizon v2.1.0 now, you'll be ready when that day comes! For more, check the release notes linked to above.
In case you missed it, at this point, Horizon no longer requires you to run a standalone instance of Stellar Core, which does a lot to simplify Stellar ops. Best practice:
Run Stellar Core to participate in consensus and improve network health and decentralization, take advantage of Stellar’s issuer enforced finality feature, and vote on fundamental network changes (like inflation or fee changes).
Run Horizon if you want to find out what happened on the blockchain in the past, find out the current state of the world (e.g. account balances), track new events that you care about, and submit transactions.
Run each independently if you want to do both.
For more on the new Horizon architecture, check out our recent blog post: https://www.stellar.org/developers-blog/a-new-sun-on-the-horizon?locale=en
If you have any questions, let me know.