Arming validators for ext week's Protocol 20 upgrade vote

[Justin Rice]

Hello Validators!  

The Protocol 20 Mainnet upgrade vote is scheduled for a week from today: January 30, 2024 at 1500 UTC.

If you run a validator, and you agree that the network should switch to the new protocol (thereby activating Soroban smart contract functionality) make sure to arm it for the vote!

Here's the command you use to do that:
upgrades?mode=set&upgradetime=2024-01-30T15:00:00Z&protocolversion=20.

You can check that it worked using the info command:
$ stellar-core http-command info

For more, check the Protocol 20 Upgrade Guide:
https://stellar.org/blog/developers/protocol-20-upgrade-guide

The plan is to roll out smart contracts on the Mainnet in phases, so in the weeks and months following a successful upgrade, there will be a series of follow-up validator votes to adjust network settings to gradually increase capacity for smart-contract transactions.  

More info on that here:

https://stellar.org/blog/developers/the-stellar-network-s-phased-rollout-of-smart-contracts-the-road-to-mainnet

I'll share some docs about those network-settings votes soon, but for now,I just wanted to poke you about the protocol-version-upgrade vote.  Poke!