Stellar Mainnet upgraded to Protocol 20 on February 20, enabling smart contract functionality through Soroban. This guide provides developers and businesses with upgrade instructions for SDKs, infrastructure, and related software to ensure compatibility.
The Stellar network successfully upgraded to Protocol 20 on February 20, 2024, bringing smart contract capabilities via Soroban after over two years of development and testing. The guide outlines critical upgrade steps for different stakeholder groups: SDK users must update to the latest versions (with breaking changes in JavaScript SDKs including package renaming and Node 18 minimum requirement), infrastructure operators must upgrade Stellar Core to v20.2.0 or above and Horizon (which requires a state rebuild), and Soroban RPC users must upgrade or select an infrastructure provider. Key breaking changes include protocol incompatibility with older software versions, Horizon state rebuild requirements, and JavaScript SDK package naming changes. The document provides comprehensive links to all relevant releases across multiple programming languages and emphasizes the importance of immediate upgrades to avoid network incompatibility and downtime.
