📢 Attention: Casper Node Peregrine(v1.5.6) Release Update - Testnet Activation 📢

The Casper network Peregrine (v1.5.6) update is a patch release that includes enhancements and exciting new features to network operations. The most significant changes are the reduction of block times to 16 seconds, the 99% refund of unspent funds, and the lowering of control flow opcode costs, resulting in a reduction in mint and transfer costs for contracts.

Call to Action

The production gas costs of the branching opcodes have been lowered and some of the host function costs and storage cost increased. This change has resulted in overall robustness of the network and a reduction in mint and transfer costs but an increase in installation costs. Operators must also note that the ttl has been lowered from 18 hours to 2 hours to support the 16 second block times.

A test sample of the reduction amount is here. Please note that all new contracts will be able to benefit from this change, but for existing contracts to benefit, they need to be upgraded, so that the new version of the gas table gets injected. Thus, all contract owners are requested to take the necessary action to take advantage of this change.

How do the Changes Impact Network Operators?

1. There is no impact to network operations and no downtime. The operators will notice changes in the chainspec for the following, core.minimum_block_time, core.round_seigniorage_rate, highway.block_gas_limit in order to support the reduced block times to 16 seconds. There are other cost associated changes as well. Also, please note that the ttl has been lowered to 2 hours.

How do the Changes Impact Smart Contract /dApp /SDK Developers?

1. There is no impact to existing contracts and our contract developers are highly encouraged to test their existing contracts on integration or testnet versions of 1.5.6 (Peregrine).

All new contracts will benefit from the control flow opcode changes as mentioned earlier and existing contracts need to upgrade to reap the benefits of this change.

Please refer to the Release Memo here for information on the key changes. Also, please refer to the below details for the Testnet activation date and time.

Testnet activation time:
Activation point: Era 12268
2024-01-30 16:09 UTC
2024-01-30 08:09 US/Pacific
2024-01-30 11:09 US/Eastern
2024-01-30 17:09 Europe/Zurich
2024-01-31 00:09 Asia/Hong_Kong