Stellar to Delay its Protocol Update Due to a Bug

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The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has announced plans to delay the scheduled network update vote, originally set for January 30, due to a bug found in the Stellar Core v20.1.0 release.

After receiving feedback from the Stellar ecosystem, the SDF has decided to neutralize its validators in support of postponing the vote until a bug fix, currently in development, is available.

The vulnerability is considered to have a low risk of affecting the network due to the phased rollout. However, it may still impact applications and services that utilize the Soroban smart contract platform, which is set to be activated on the mainnet with the new protocol.

The SDF has highlighted the collaborative nature of network upgrades, and has sought input from the Stellar Dev Discord and developer mailing list on whether to proceed with the vote despite the bug.

Ultimately, the SDF has decided to postpone the vote after taking into consideration the feedback and discussions from the community. If the upgrade to Protocol 20 is approved by validators, it will still take place on the scheduled date. If a quorum is not reached, the network will continue to operate on version 19.

A corrected release for the update is expected to be presented within the next two weeks.