Stellar's Bell upgrade, Protocol 30, is live on testnet, adding muxed contract addresses and post-quantum signature checks before a Nov. 23 mainnet vote.
Key Facts
Stellar's Bell upgrade, Protocol 30, went live on the network's testnet on Tuesday, and validators are scheduled to vote on the mainnet upgrade on Nov. 23 at 17:00 UTC.
Bell adds muxed contract addresses so one smart contract can serve many customers, lets smart contracts verify ML-DSA post-quantum signatures, and moves ledger timing to milliseconds.
The Stellar Development Foundation said Bell does not make Stellar post-quantum, because network transaction signatures remain Ed25519.
The Stellar (XLM) network's Bell upgrade, known as Protocol 30, is live on testnet ahead of a mainnet vote on Nov. 23.
The upgrade lets one smart contract hold funds for many customers, adds post-quantum signature checks for smart contracts and lays groundwork for faster ledgers.
"Bell is live on Testnet," Stellar said on X on Tuesday, adding a reminder that the mainnet vote is on Nov. 23.
Stellar's Bell upgrade is live on testnet ahead of a Nov. 23 mainnet vote. Source: Stellar Development Foundation
What Stellar's Bell Upgrade Changes
Bell carries three changes, the Stellar Development Foundation said in a blog post introducing it.
The first, CAP-84, adds muxed contract addresses, a new format starting with W that attaches a 64-bit ID to a smart contract address. Until now, a smart account holding customer balances could not tell incoming payments apart, which meant one contract per customer, the foundation said.
The second, CAP-87, lets smart contracts verify ML-DSA signatures, one of the post-quantum standards the US National Institute of Standards and Technology finalized in 2024. The foundation called it the first onchain piece of Stellar's Quantum Preparedness Plan.
The third, CAP-88, records ledger close times in milliseconds instead of whole seconds. The foundation said it is the protocol-level prerequisite for faster ledgers, after September's Protocol 28 cut mainnet close times from about 5.7 seconds to 5 seconds.
What Bell Doesn't Do
Bell does not make Stellar post-quantum, the foundation said. Network transaction signatures remain Ed25519, and a native post-quantum signer for classic accounts will come in a future protocol change. Smart contract accounts can opt into quantum-safe authorization to guard against future quantum computing attacks.
Bell also does not by itself make Stellar produce blocks faster than every five seconds. The foundation told developers to upgrade their SDKs and update any custom ledger decoders before the mainnet vote, since Bell changes the ledger header format.
The testnet upgrade vote was scheduled for 17:00 UTC on Tuesday. The upgrade takes effect on mainnet if validators approve it on Nov. 23, the foundation said.
Stellar's Recent Network Activity
Stellar has added DeFi and tokenized products in the past week. Curve Finance launched StableSwap on Stellar, its first non-EVM chain, and Janus Henderson and Centrifuge launched a tokenized Nasdaq-100 fund on the network.
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