Stellar Development Foundation announced Protocol 20 upgrade with Soroban smart contracts, scheduled for January 30 validator vote on Mainnet. The network will roll out smart contract functionality in three phased stages to ensure stability and performance.
The Stellar Development Foundation and SDK maintainers released a full software suite supporting Protocol 20, which brings Soroban smart contracts to Stellar. Validators will vote on January 30 to upgrade from Protocol 19 to Protocol 20, marking the network's most transformative upgrade. Rather than an immediate rollout, the ecosystem will deploy a phased approach: Phase 0 focuses on network stability and smoke testing, Phase 1 allows developers to deploy and monitor contracts on Mainnet, and Phase 2 enables full user-ready smart contract functionality at approximately 10 transactions per second. This measured strategy prioritizes network security and performance while gradually expanding capacity.