Stellar Foundation supports delay of the long-awaited update due to a bug

Jan 29, 2024
On January 25, Stellar Foundation with support of the blockchain ecosystem discovered a bug in the Stellar Core v20.1.0 software. This incident is likely to cause the delay of the update.
image

The bug can affect applications and services in new transactions of Soroban smart contracts after the update. At the same time, the SDF management is confident that the error poses a small risk, given the phased deployment plan. After negative feedback from developers, the foundation plans to cancel the vote for updating the network, scheduled for January 30.

According to the message, other validators can continue updating the “Protocol 20”. On Sunday, an SDF spokesman said that six of the seven tier one validators had previously announced plans to reschedule the update, including SDF, Satoshipay, Blockdaemon, Public Node, Lobstr and Whalestack.

A Stellar representative said that if fewer than five organizations vote for the update, the necessary quorum will not be reached to make a decision.

Most likely, the update will be postponed and two weeks will be allocated to fix errors. If the update is eventually postponed, the foundation will coordinate its actions to determine a future voting date.

Recall that Stellar is one of the oldest blockchains, created as an offshoot of the Ripple protocol in 2014.