Protocol Changes

• Voting for the protocol upgrade is scheduled to start at 2022-08-17 15:00:00 UTC.
• Stabilized protocol_feature_chunk_only_producers. Validators will now be assigned to blocks and chunks separately.
• The validator uptime kickout threshold has been reduced to 80%
• Total stake of kicked out validators will not exceed 30% of total stake
• Edge nonces between peers can now optionally indicate an expiration time

Features:

• The logic around forwarding chunks to validators is improved
• Approvals and partial encoded chunks are now sent multiple times, which should reduce stalls due to lost approvals when the network is under high load
• We now keep a list of "TIER1" accounts (validators) for whom latency/reliability of messages routed through the network is critical
• /debug HTTP page has been improved
• Messages aren't routed through peers that are too far behind
• network.external_address field in config.json file is deprecated. In fact it has never been used and only served to confuse everyone #7300

Fixes:

• Log lines printed every 10 seconds are now less expensive to compute
• message broadcasts have been improved/optimized

CODE_COLOR: CODE_YELLOW_TESTNET
RELEASE_VERSION: 1.29.0-rc.1
PROTOCOL_UPGRADE: TRUE
DATABASE_UPGRADE: FALSE
SECURITY_UPGRADE: FALSE