Stellar (XLM) Counts Down to Major Smart Contract Upgrade, Key Dates Revealed

Stellar is counting down to a major upgrade that will make it easier for builders writing smart contracts on the blockchain, while a change under the hood will help the network reach consensus faster as it continues to scale.

In a recent post, Stellar made it known that the next upgrade to the network, Adapter (Protocol 28), is on its way. The Adapter upgrade is designed for builders, with two of its three changes ($CAP-85, $CAP-86) aimed squarely at making Soroban smart contracts easier to build, upgrade, and scale; reducing the number of contracts users have to deploy; making upgrades atomic and safe; and allowing contract data to evolve without breaking. The third ($CAP-83) strengthens the consensus layer everything else rests on.

$CAP-83 improves consensus performance under load and gives validators a way to keep consensus moving even when transaction data is slow to propagate, helping Stellar to scale.

$CAP-85 introduces atomic upgrades for fleets of contracts. If users deploy many contracts that share the same code, Adapter adds a way to update the shared executable reference once and upgrade the full fleet together. $CAP-86 aims to make contract data migrations easier.

Key dates to note

Stellar has released a full timeline for the upcoming Adapter upgrade. August 13 saw Adapter's core stable release, while August 13–21 will see infrastructure and SDK releases. On August 27 at 17:00 UTC, the upgrade will have its testnet vote, potentially going live on testnet.

Adapter will see its mainnet vote on September 16 at 17:00 UTC, potentially activating on the Stellar mainnet. Protocol 28, Adapter, adds sparse map host functions so contracts can handle missing or extra fields more gracefully during migrations. Operators of typical SDK-based integrations are urged to bump their SDK version before August 27 for testnet builds and before September 16 for mainnet builds.

Taken together, the recent protocol upgrades aim to make Stellar a more capable, developer-friendly platform for real financial applications, without compromising the speed and low cost the network is known for.