Protocol 21 Upgrade Timeline Announcement

Justin

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May 7, 2024, 1:59:53 PMMay 7

to Stellar Developers

Hey, Developers! Today kicks off the Protocol 21 rollout!

Key dates:

May 14: Testnet upgrade
June 18: Mainnet upgrade vote

Protocol 21 introduces secp256r1 support to allow passkey signing for Soroban transactions, improves state archival functionality, and adds some fee and cost modeling optimizations. It also provides validators one of the largest performance optimizations to date: a brand new database backend called BucketListDB.

Before the network upgrade vote, please make sure to install up-to-date versions of any and all Stellar-related software you use. And, if you run a validator, please make sure to set the DEPRECATED_SQL_LEDGER_STATE when you upgrade your Stellar Core package.

To find out more about what's included in Protocol 21, check out the announcement post: https://stellar.org/blog/developers/announcing-protocol-21
For upgrade instructions and links to relevant software, check out the Protocol 21 Upgrade Guide: https://stellar.org/blog/developers/protocol-21-upgrade-guide
For more info about BucketListDB, check out the dedicate blog post: https://stellar.org/blog/developers/upcoming-database-changes-in-protocol-21

If you have questions, suggestions, or Protocol-21-related conversation topics, please raise them here or in the #protocol-21 channel on the Stellar Dev Discord. Exciting times!

Justin

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May 14, 2024, 1:20:20 PMMay 14

to Stellar Developers

Today at 1700 UTC, the Stellar Testnet upgraded to Protocol 21. Woohoo!

If you're building on Testnet and you're running into problems, there's a good chance you need to update your Stellar-related software to run preview releases that support Protocol 21.

For more information and instructions, check out the Protocol 21 Upgrade Guide:

https://stellar.org/blog/developers/protocol-21-upgrade-guide

Over the coming weeks, stable versions of all of that software will be released, and we will update that guide with links as they do.

Next up: the Mainnet vote, which is scheduled for June 18, 1700 UTC.

Interested in the new features introduced in Protocol 21, including secp256r1 support, which will allow integration of passkeys for user friendly signing solutions? Check out the Protocol 21 announcement blog:

https://stellar.org/blog/developers/announcing-protocol-21

Thoughts? Questions? Suggestions? Share them here or in the Protocol 21 channel on Discord: https://discord.gg/stellardev

Justin

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May 31, 2024, 7:35:31 AMMay 31

to Stellar Developers

Reminder: the Protocol 21 Mainnet vote is June 18 at 1700 UTC.

At this point, stable releases of Stellar Core, Horizon, RPC, the JS SDK, and several other SDKs are available, and the CLI should be available soon. Please make sure to install up-to-date versions of anything you use before the vote to ensure continued compatibility with the network!