Stellar Updates Bell Upgrade Guide Ahead Of November Votes

Stellar has updated its Bell upgrade guide with the software versions that wallets, exchanges and infrastructure operators need before November’s network votes. The October 23 update adds concrete release references as teams prepare for changes to addresses and ledger data under Protocol 30.

TL;DR: Stellar’s updated Bell guide identifies software needed before November’s upgrade votes. Applications must handle new addresses and ledger formats; network activation remains conditional.

The Stellar Development Foundation’s revised guide lists infrastructure releases and software development kits, along with tracking links for community-maintained tools. That gives operators a version checklist for work that must happen before the network adopts the changes.

New Addresses Need Application Support

The JavaScript SDK v17.3.0 release, published October 21, supplies support for contract addresses beginning with W and updated ledger definitions. Its release notes include tools to encode, decode and validate those addresses, plus transfer handling. That version was already available when the readiness guide was updated two days later.

Under Bell, a contract address can carry an additional customer identifier. The foundation’s technical announcement explains that this lets one smart contract receive funds for multiple customers while recording which customer a payment belongs to. It extends an arrangement already available for classic Stellar accounts.

For a custody service, that could simplify a shared account structure. The application still has to recognize the new address and associate the identifier with the right customer. Installing a library capable of reading the address does not, by itself, change every validation or bookkeeping rule built around it.

There is a second preparation task for indexers, explorers and other services that read raw ledger data. Protocol 30 changes the ledger header format. The guide warns that decoders using older definitions will fail on the new values, making compatibility work relevant beyond businesses adopting the new address feature.

Quantum Verification Has A Limited Scope

Bell also adds support for ML-DSA signature verification inside smart contracts. That can support custom accounts using post-quantum authorization, but ordinary network transaction signatures remain Ed25519. The change supplies a building block for developers rather than completing a network-wide cryptographic migration.

A separate change introduces millisecond ledger timestamps. The foundation says this removes a technical barrier to faster ledger closing in future steps. Bell alone does not reduce the current interval. Applications should also avoid assuming that consecutive ledgers must have different whole-second timestamps.

Some tooling is still being finalized: the guide lists the Protocol 30 command-line release as pending and the Soroban Rust SDK as a release candidate. Testnet validators are scheduled to vote November 3, followed by a mainnet vote November 23, both at 17:00 UTC. The upgrade takes effect if validators approve, and the foundation says dates can change.

Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.