The Stellar Development Foundation announced Protocol 20, which brings Soroban smart contracts to Stellar. The network will adopt a phased rollout approach to gradually increase smart contract capacity while monitoring network stability and performance.
The Stellar Development Foundation and SDK maintainers released a full suite of software supporting Protocol 20, enabling Soroban smart contracts on Stellar. After validators vote to approve the upgrade, the network will transition from Protocol 19 to Protocol 20. Rather than immediately deploying at full capacity, the ecosystem has agreed to a phased approach: Phase 0 focuses on smoke-testing and basic contract execution; Phase 1 allows developers to deploy contracts on Mainnet while monitoring network impact; Phase 2 marks the user-ready Mainnet with capacity matching average DeFi networks (~10 transactions per second). This deliberate strategy prioritizes network stability, security, and performance while allowing continuous testing and ecosystem preparation.
