The Stellar Foundation requests that the Protocol 20 update be delayed after a bug is discovered

The Stellar Development Foundation's (SDF) smart contract update on the Stellar blockchain was released at the end of the month after discovering a bug in Stellar Core v20.1.0.

“We have decided to disarm our validators to postpone the Protocol 20 vote on January 30 until a bug is fixed,” SDF said in a January 27 blog post.

Based on ecosystem feedback, we've decided to disarm our validators until a bug fix – already in the works – is available to extend the Protocol 20 vote on January 30th.

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

— Stellar (@StellarOrg) January 27, 2024

The foundation said the bug, discovered by SDF on January 25, was “low risk” but could affect several applications. The SDF said it is already working on a fix that should be available within two weeks.

However, SDF stressed that non-SDF certifiers on Stellar can still vote in favor of the Protocol 20 update on Jan. 30, so SDF will be the only one to decide whether or not to upgrade the network as it is.

“If validators choose to postpone the update, we will work together to determine a future sound date after the release of the latest version of Stellar Core that contains the bug fixes.”

“Regardless of the outcome, the SDF will continue to work to resolve the error and discuss it with other verifiers through both public and private channels,” the SDF added.

The SDF said a quorum of voters was needed to pass the Protocol 20 amendment. As of December 2023, there were 43 validator nodes, according to Stellarbeat.io.

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The error occurs when a “Soroban” transaction request is made, but a refund is issued and the payment is blocked. Under current code, refunds are not sent to the payment-outsource account as they should be, SDF explained in a Jan. 25 GitHub post.

Soroban is a smart contract platform released on the Stellar testnet in October 2022.

SDF launched a $100 million fund in the same month to attract developers to the platform.

One of Stellar's core developers, Tyler van der Hoeven, stated in a January 26 X-Post that Protocol 20 will be a “phased release,” but did not say how long it would take to fully implement Soroban smart contracts on Stellar.

A vote is scheduled for next week to ground-validate the functionality of the smart contract on the Stellar blockchain. The innovation pipeline will be slowly and carefully turned on to a planned release. I've been waiting for this day for ten years, but you better…

— Tyler Van Der Hoeven (@kalepail) January 26, 2024

Stellar is one of the oldest blockchain projects and is mostly focused on payments and asset tokenization. XLM, which powers the Stellar blockchain, currently has a market cap of $3.2 billion.

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