Protocol 22 Upgrade Guide

At this point, Protocol 22 is live on Testnet and Mainnet! If you are having issues with your Stellar integration, make sure to install up-to-date versions of any and all Stellar-related software you use!

If you use a Stellar SDK

Upgrade to the latest version of relevant Stellar SDKs.

If you run Stellar infrastructure

If you use Docker images, pull the latest from the Docker registry. If you build from source or our Debian packages, make sure to also update your stellar-core binary used by your Horizon or RPC instance to the latest.

If you don’t run your own infrastructure but still need access to a Horizon or RPC instance, you can use an infrastructure provider. Here are lists for Horizon and RPC.

A note on Horizon Transaction Meta Default Settings Change: On December 18, Transaction Meta (tx meta) will no longer be returned by SDF’s hosted Horizon API by default. Instead of using Horizon to access Transaction Meta (tx meta), developers should access it with the RPC or Stellar Core. Originally, this change was planned to coincide with the Protocol 22 upgrade, but we postponed it due to requests from the ecosystem for more time to prepare.

Operators hosting their own Horizon can emulate this behavior by configuring the SKIP_TXMETA flag, should they also choose to stop serving Transaction Meta (tx meta). Please bear in mind that we expect the operational burden to be high should you choose to continue serving it.

Context: Transaction metas describe the changes made by a transaction to the state of the ledger. Historically, Horizon has exposed these as part of the transaction resource since its inception in 2015. Now it will be served by the RPC. These metas can grow quite significantly in size. For operators who maintain Horizon with a non-trivial retention window, this could be a significant operation burden.

Notes: RPC will continue to serve transaction metas for transactions within its 7 day retention window.

If you run a validator

The Protocol 22 upgrade vote is complete! For posterity, here’s the command to arm your nodes for the upgrade:

upgrades?mode=set&upgradetime=2024-12-05T17:00:00Z&protocolversion=22

To view current network settings, see a history of protocol upgrades, and see pending proposals for future upgrades, take a look at https://stellar.expert/explorer/public/protocol-history

Soroban RPC rebrand

Soroban RPC has been officially renamed to Stellar RPC, as it is a fundamental building block for all of Stellar, not just Soroban. Operators should start installing stellar-rpc packages and images, as soroban-rpc packages and images are officially deprecated. Deprecated packages will cease to be published as of Protocol 23.

• 12/05/2024 – Updated to reflect that the Mainnet upgrade is complete. Noted that the date for horizon.stellar.org change to tx meta was delayed until December 18.
• 11/12/2024 – Updated key dates to reflect that the Testnet upgrade is complete.
• 11/12/2024 – Added context and instructions related to the Soroban RPC rebrand.
• 11/07/2024 – Added instructions and context related to Horizon Transaction Meta Default Settings Default Behavior Change.