Protocol Alpha#

This page lists the changes brought by protocol Alpha with respect to Seoul (see Protocol naming). For the list of changes brought by Seoul with respect to Rio, see Protocol Seoul.

For a higher-level overview of the most salient new features see the announcement blog.

The code can be found in directory src/proto_alpha of the master branch of Octez and the full documentation in this page.

Environment Version#

Smart Rollups#

Data Availability Layer#

Adaptive Issuance#

Michelson#

A new instruction named INDEX_ADDRESS has been added, it provides a unique identifier of type nat for values of type address, stored in the context. (MR !18866)

Gas improvements#

Breaking Changes#

RPC Changes#

Added GET /chains/<chain_id>/blocks/<block_id>/helpers/stake_info, which returns the staking power distribution for all the active delegates at the current cycle. (MR !18019)

Operation receipts#

Errors#

Protocol parameters#

Lowered the number of blocks per cycle (blocks_per_cycle) from 10800 (~1 day) to 1800 (~4 hours) on mainnet (with 8-second minimal block time). (MR !17583)
- On ghostnet where minimal block time is 4s, lowered blocks_per_cycle from 10800 (~12 hours) to 3600 (~4 hours). (MR !17583)
In order for the duration of voting periods to stay about the same, updated the number of cycles per voting period (cycles_per_voting_period) on mainnet from 14 cycles (that is, ~14 days with old cycle duration) to 84 cycles (~14 days with new cycle duration). (MR !17583)
In order to keep the same duration in days for the activation of delegate parameters, updated the number of cycles after which submitted delegate parameters take effect (delegate_parameters_activation_delay) on mainnet from 5 cycles (that is, ~5 days with old cycle duration) to 30 cycles (~5 days with new cycle duration). (MR !17583)
Reduced blocks per commitment (blocks_per_commitment) to 14 to keep the number of nonces per cycle to 128. (!17583)
Reduced the nonce revelation period (nonce_revelation_threshold) from 300 blocks to 150 blocks. Reduced accordingly the VDF difficulty (vdf_difficulty) as well. (!17583)
Lowered the consensus_rights_delay protocol constant from 2 cycles to 1 cycle. (MR !18783)
Reduced the cache_stake_distribution_cycles and cache_sampler_state_cycles protocol constants from 5 cycles to 4 cycles, in order to reduce memory consumption. Only consensus_rights_delay + slashing_delay + 2 = 1 + 1 + 2 = 4 cycles are needed. (MR !18783)

Protocol Alpha

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