Stellar Bell upgrade clears testnet vote ahead of Nov. 23

Stellar completed the testnet upgrade vote for Bell, its proposed Protocol 30, on Nov. 3, moving the changes toward a validator vote on mainnet scheduled for Nov. 23. The upgrade would add new tools for smart contracts and change how Stellar records ledger times.

• Testnet vote: Nov. 3 at 17:00 UTC
• Mainnet vote: Nov. 23 at 17:00 UTC
• Three proposals: CAP-84, CAP-87 and CAP-88

The Crypto.news report said the Stellar Development Foundation announced the testnet upgrade was complete. The mainnet date is a vote, not a confirmed activation: validators must approve the changes for Bell to take effect.

What changes would Bell bring to Stellar smart contracts?

Bell’s three proposals cover customer addresses, signature checks and ledger timing, according to the Stellar Development Foundation’s Protocol 30 announcement. CAP-84 would let a smart contract address carry a 64-bit customer identifier, so a business could route deposits for many customers through one contract rather than deploying a separate contract for each person.

The new address format begins with W. When tokens arrive, the customer identifier is recorded in the transfer event, helping the application identify whose funds were sent. Wallets and other services that process Stellar addresses will need to recognize the new format.

CAP-87 would let smart contracts verify ML-DSA signatures, a post-quantum signature standard. A smart account could use such a signature to authorize spending, but the change does not replace the Ed25519 signatures used for network transactions. Stellar says verification will run through Stellar Core because it takes more computing power than conventional signature checks.

Will the upgrade make Stellar ledgers faster right away?

No. CAP-88 changes ledger timestamps from whole-second resolution to milliseconds, removing a protocol limit that prevents the network from targeting intervals below one second. It prepares for future changes that could shorten ledger closing times; Bell itself does not do that.

The distinction matters because a finer clock is groundwork, not a speed increase users should expect immediately. Stellar’s announcement says developers are already testing faster close times on experimental branches.

What must operators prepare before the mainnet vote?

Validators, wallet providers, exchanges and infrastructure operators need to prepare their software for the proposed changes. Stellar advises SDK users to update before the votes. Services that read raw ledger data without an SDK, including indexers and analytics tools, need to update their XDR definitions—the formats they use to decode ledger data—or their decoders may stop working.

The upgrade also changes the ledger header format, but the existing closeTime field will continue to report whole seconds, the foundation says. The Nov. 23 vote will determine whether the changes reach mainnet. Until validators approve them, the schedule remains a plan and the proposed features are not active there.

Sources and documents

• Crypto.news report — crypto.news
• Stellar Development Foundation’s Protocol 30 announcement — stellar.org