The Stellar Development Foundation officially activated the Protocol 30 upgrade, codenamed Bell, on the testnet on November 4, 2026. The rollout followed the completion of a validator vote on November 3 at 17:00 UTC. Three technical proposals take center stage in the Bell upgrade - CAP-84, CAP-87, and CAP-88 - strengthening smart contracts, post-quantum cryptographic verification, and ledger close-time efficiency.
W-Prefix Addresses for Custodians
Proposal CAP-84 introduces a new multiplexed or muxed contract address format starting with the letter W. The W format distinguishes muxed smart contracts from legacy muxed accounts on the Stellar network, which use an M prefix.
Crypto exchanges and custodial entities can leverage W addresses to manage funds for millions of users within a single smart contract. The system embeds a 64-bit identifier into the transaction destination address. Platform operators no longer need to deploy and maintain separate contracts for each individual customer.
NIST-Standard Verification Comes to Soroban
Soroban, Stellar’s smart contract platform, integrates ML-DSA post-quantum digital signature verification via proposal CAP-87. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) designated the ML-DSA algorithm as an official standard in 2024 to defend against quantum computing threats to conventional elliptic-curve cryptography.
Legacy elliptic-curve schemes such as Ed25519, secp256k1, and secp256r1 risk being compromised once sufficiently capable quantum computers emerge. Stellar Core handles ML-DSA signature verification directly at the core level due to its heavy computational demands. The step represents the first on-chain component of Stellar’s Quantum Preparedness Plan.
Awaiting Validator Approval on November 23
The third technical proposal in the Bell release, CAP-88, overhauls the network’s ledger close time recording system. The updated ledger close time mechanism is designed to pave the way for faster transaction processing in subsequent protocol upgrades.
Stellar network validators are scheduled to hold an official vote to activate Protocol 30 on the mainnet on November 23, 2026, at 17:00 UTC. This timeline gives the community nearly three weeks to test code stability on the testnet.
The testnet testing phase allows application developers and exchange operators to verify W address compatibility and smart contract readiness before the validator vote determines its mainnet rollout.
Reported by crypto.news.
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