Stellar (XLM) Readies for Its Biggest Protocol Upgrade: Details

Blockchain-based payment network Stellar (XLM) readies for its biggest, most complex protocol upgrade to date, “Protocol 20 Upgrade,” which will introduce support for Soroban smart contracts.

In an exciting upcoming development, Soroban’s smart contract support will be added to Stellar’s testnet on Sept. 20 at 3:00 p.m. UTC. Soroban makes this known in an X post, adding that the Soroban Futurenet will remain live and unaffected for the time being.

The Stellar testnet will also upgrade on Wednesday, Sept. 20, at 3:00 p.m. UTC to release candidate versions of Stellar Core and Horizon.

As the Protocol 20 upgrade would introduce new network settings that validators control, the initial upgrade vote might be followed by a series of additional votes to adjust the settings.

As stated by Stellar in a blog post explaining the details of the upgrade, mainnet validators are likely to schedule an upgrade vote date for six weeks after stable releases come out. Thus, the date for the public network upgrade vote is TBD, which means “to be determined.”

Stellar, however, promises to provide an update in this regard as time goes on. It also promises to immediately supply timelines for the votes and also update with new dates as new information comes in or as new releases come out.

Stellar garnered attention in the past week after it unveiled its much-awaited teaser, which was a fancy commercial with British actor Idris Elba. A new look for Stellar was also undertaken with a website rebrand.  

On Sept. 14, Stellar also introduced “Decentralife,” a series that explores the authentic stories of individuals creating real-world change through blockchain technology.

At the time of writing, Stellar (XLM) was less moved by the upgrade news. XLM was up 1.40% in the last 24 hours to $0.119, mirroring the general rise in the crypto market.