Stellar’s mainnet vote on the Bell upgrade is scheduled for November 23 at 17:00 UTC. According to ChainCatcher, Stellar updated its Bell upgrade guide ahead of Protocol 30, advising wallets, exchanges, and infrastructure operators to upgrade their software before the November network vote to support new contract addresses beginning with W. JavaScript SDK v17.3.0 is available with encoding, decoding, and validation tools.
Bell enables contract addresses to carry customer identifiers and requires indexers and explorers to adapt to a change in ledger header format. The upgrade also adds ML-DSA post-quantum signature verification and millisecond-level ledger timestamps; regular transactions will continue using Ed25519, and the block interval will remain unchanged. Testnet validators are scheduled to vote on November 3 at 17:00 UTC. The mainnet vote is scheduled for November 23 at 17:00 UTC, and the upgrade will take effect if approved. The dates may change.
