Stellar Foundation Urges Postponement of Protocol 20 Following Bug Discovery

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has advocated for a delay in the Protocol 20 upgrade following the discovery of a bug in Stellar Core v20.1.0. Originally scheduled for the end of the month, the upgrade is now being reconsidered.

In a blog post dated Jan. 27, the SDF announced its decision to temporarily halt validators in support of postponing the Protocol 20 vote, which was slated for Jan. 30, until after the bug is fixed.

Based on ecosystem feedback, we’ve decided to disarm our validators in support of postponing the Protocol 20 vote on Jan. 30 until after a bug fix – which is already in the works – is available.

Read more about our decision below. https://t.co/b0hXJqlqem

— Stellar (@StellarOrg) January 27, 2024

The bug was identified on Jan. 25, and the foundation emphasised that the risk was minimal, yet it could potentially affect various applications. A fix is currently in progress and is expected to be available within two weeks.

However, the decision whether to postpone the upgrade or not ultimately lies with the network validators, as non-SDF validators may still opt to proceed with the Protocol 20 upgrade on Jan. 30. In the event of a postponement, the SDF stated its intention to collaborate with validators to determine a new voting date once a bug-fixed version of Stellar Core is released: “If validators opt to postpone the upgrade, we will coordinate to determine a future vote date once a new version of Stellar Core that contains a bug fix is released.”

The SDF also highlighted the need for a quorum by voting validators for the Protocol 20 upgrade to pass. As of December 2023, there were 43 validator nodes, according to Stellarbeat.io.

The bug identified occurs during a “Soroban” transaction request, resulting in a refund and fee-bump. However, the refund fails to reach the fee-bump’s source account as intended under the current code, as explained in a Jan. 25 GitHub post by the SDF. Soroban, a smart contract platform, was launched on a Stellar testnet in October 2022.

In addition, the SDF announced a $100 million fund to incentivize developers to engage with the platform in the same month.

Tyler van der Hoeven, one of Stellar’s core developers, mentioned in a Jan. 26 post on X that Protocol 20 will be implemented in phases, although the timeline for full Soroban smart contract integration into Stellar was not specified.

The validator vote to land smart contract functionality on the Stellar blockchain is scheduled for next week. It will be a phased rollout with the faucet of innovation being slowly and carefully turned on. I’ve waited for this day for nearly a decade though so you’d better…

— Tyler van der Hoeven (@kalepail) January 26, 2024