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Stellar's Foundation Supports Delay of Smart-Contracts Upgrade After Bug Found

A bug in the upgraded software, identified Jan. 25, was deemed to pose "little risk," but after "robust feedback" from the blockchain's developer community, the Stellar Development Foundation is now recommending a delay beyond the Jan. 30 target date.

Updated Mar 9, 2024, 5:49 a.m. UTCPublished Jan 28, 2024, 10:41 p.m. UTC

Stellar Development Foundation's Tomer Weller, who is leading the "Soroban" project to add smart contracts. (Stellar)

The Stellar blockchain is likely to delay its much anticipated upgrade to add Ethereum-style smart contracts, after a bug was found that prompted developers and validators behind the project to reconsider the Jan. 30 target date.

The Stellar Development Foundation, which supports the blockchain's ecosystem, found a bug on Jan. 25 in the Stellar Core v20.1.0 software, according to a draft blog post shared with CoinDesk on Saturday. The bug could theoretically affect applications and services on the new "Soroban" smart-contracts transactions once the upgrade goes through.

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SDF officials "decided that the bug posed little risk given the phased rollout plan," but after "robust feedback" from the developer community, the foundation is now planning to "disarm" its own validators to prevent them from voting to upgrade the network on Jan. 30, according to the post.

Other validators could still choose to push ahead with the "Protocol 20" upgrade, according to the post.

But in an email on Sunday, an SDF representative told CoinDesk that six of seven tier-1 validators had now communicated plans to disarm, including SDF, Satoshipay, Blockdaemon, Public Node, Lobstr and Whalestack.

"Given current configurations, if less than five organizations vote for the upgrade, it won’t have sufficient quorum to be accepted," according to the representative. "In other words, it appears that the upgrade will be postponed."

A fix for the bug should be available within the next two weeks, and if the upgrade ends up getting postponed, the foundation would then "coordinate to determine a future vote date."

Stellar is one of the oldest blockchains, created as a fork of the Ripple protocol in 2014, and the project is upgrading to add the programmability that Ethereum and its "smart contracts" are known for. Traders may be speculating whether the facelift could put fresh energy into the project's native XLM tokens.

UPDATE (Jan 28, 22:40 UTC): Adds update from Stellar Development Foundation on number of tier-1 validators signaling support for a delay of the of the upgrade.

Stellar Stellar Development Foundation smart contracts

Bradley Keoun

Bradley Keoun is CoinDesk's managing editor of tech & protocols, where he oversees a team of reporters covering blockchain technology, and previously ran the global crypto markets team. A two-time Loeb Awards finalist, he previously was chief global finance and economic correspondent for TheStreet and before that worked as an editor and reporter for Bloomberg News in New York and Mexico City, reporting on Wall Street, emerging markets and the energy industry. He started out as a police-beat reporter for the Gainesville Sun in Florida and later worked as a general-assignment reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana, he double-majored in electrical engineering and classical studies as an undergraduate at Duke University and later obtained a master's in journalism from the University of Florida. He is currently based in Austin, Texas, and in his spare time plays guitar, sings in a choir and hikes in the Texas Hill Country. He owns less than $1,000 each of several cryptocurrencies.