Stellar updated its Bell Protocol 30 guide on October 23 with software versions operators need before November’s network votes. The upgrade is not yet approved: testnet validators are scheduled to vote November 3 and mainnet validators November 23, both at 17:00 UTC. It takes effect only if validators approve, and the foundation says the dates can change.
Applications must support new contract addresses that can include a customer identifier; installing a compatible library alone does not update their validation or bookkeeping rules. Services that read raw ledger data must also update their decoders for a changed ledger header format. The guide lists the command-line release as pending and the Soroban Rust SDK as a release candidate. Bell would add post-quantum signature verification inside smart contracts, not replace ordinary transaction signatures, and its new millisecond timestamps would not by themselves shorten ledger closing times.
