invezz.com
The Stellar Development Foundation has announced that the Stellar (XLM) blockchain network’s “Protocol 20” upgrade is now live. With it, Stellar has welcomed the Soroban smart contracts to the mainnet.
“On Feb. 20, Stellar network validators voted to upgrade Mainnet to Protocol 20, kicking off a new era for the Stellar smart contracts tech stack, which delivers a secure, batteries-included developer experience built to scale and for real-world use,” the Stellar Development Foundation said in a blog post.
This milestone is big news for Stellar, the payments network that seeks to expand its functionality amid growing crypto adoption across the world. The upgrade was initially planned for January 30, but as Invezz reported, a bug incident saw validators vote to postpone Protocol 20 activation until a later date.
An update the SDF provided indicated validators had agreed to roll out a phased activation on February 20.
“Today’s vote marks the beginning of a phased rollout where validators, who vote to configure network settings, will increase capacity for smart contract transactions in a series of methodical steps. The phased approach will give those validators, as well as other network participants, time to monitor smart contract functionality’s impact on the network and ensure performance, security, and stability at every step,” the Stellar Development Foundation wrote.
The Stellar team has posted that the first smart contract was already live on the mainnet.
First smart contract uploaded to Stellar Mainnet. That was fast 🏃♂️🏃♀️https://t.co/HpuGBKHxc6 pic.twitter.com/laNut2i4w6
— Stellar (@StellarOrg) February 20, 2024
Stellar (XLM) price
XLM, the native token of the Stellar ecosystem, was largely muted on Tuesday evening despite the news. The tokens traded around $0.115, roughly 1.6% down as the altcoin mirrored the broader market’s slight retreat. XLM price was however nearly 5% up in the past week.
Like XRP, it has lagged the major altcoins and was only 22% up in the past year at the time of writing.
The post Stellar’s Protocol 20 upgrade goes live, bringing smart contracts to the mainnet appeared first on Invezz