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The Stellar (XLM) blockchain-based payment network is getting ready for its most substantial and sophisticated protocol upgrade, known as the “Protocol 20 Upgrade.” This upgrade will bring support for Soroban smart contracts to the network.
As part of the upgrade, the Soroban smart contract feature will be added to the Stellar testnet on September 20th at 15:00 UTC. Soroban announced this in an X-post, noting that Soroban Futurenet will remain active and unaffected.
The Stellar testnet will also undergo an upgrade on Wednesday, September 20th, at 15:00 UTC to release potential versions of Stellar Core and Horizon.
Because the Protocol 20 Upgrade will introduce new network settings controlled by validators, a series of additional votes may follow the initial upgrade vote to fine-tune the settings.
As Stellar explained in a blog post detailing the upgrade, the validators of the mainnet will likely schedule the upgrade vote six weeks after stable releases are made. Therefore, the date of the public network upgrade vote will be determined at a later time.
Stellar, however, promises to provide updated information on this matter as time progresses. It also pledges to promptly provide a voting schedule and update dates as new information becomes available or new releases are issued.
Stellar attracted attention last week after unveiling a long-awaited teaser—a stylish advertisement featuring British actor Idris Elba. Stellar’s new look was also achieved through a website rebrand.
On September 14th, Stellar introduced the “Decentralife” series, exploring authentic stories of people making real-world changes using blockchain technology.
As of the time of writing, news of the upgrade has not affected the price of Stellar (XLM). XLM has risen by 1.40% over the past 24 hours to $0.119, reflecting the overall market growth in cryptocurrencies.
