Stellar promotes the Bell upgrade, with mainnet voting starting on November 23

Stellar updates the Bell upgrade guide in preparation for Protocol 30. Wallets, exchanges, and infrastructure operators need to upgrade their software before the network vote in November to support new contract addresses starting with W; JavaScript SDK v17.3.0 has been released, providing encoding, decoding, and verification tools.

Bell supports contract addresses carrying customer identifiers, and indexers and browsers also need to adapt to the changes in ledger header format; this upgrade also adds ML-DSA post-quantum signature verification and millisecond-level ledger timestamps, while regular transactions still use Ed25519, and the current block interval remains unchanged. The testnet validator vote is scheduled for November 3 at 17:00 UTC, and the mainnet vote is scheduled for November 23 at 17:00 UTC, effective upon approval, with dates subject to change.