Dear Tezos bakers and node operators, v18.0~rc1 has just been published, and v17.3 has been released.
v18.0~rc1 is the first candidate for Octez v18.0. If this release candidate proves to be stable, it will be released as version 18.0.
We invite you to test this release candidate on Ghostnet, Nairobinet and the upcoming Oxfordnet test networks, and to report any issue on https://gitlab.com/tezos/tezos/-/issues so that they can be addressed in time for the release of v18.0.
Oxford support. Octez v18.0~rc1 includes a new version (V10) of the protocol environment, which is the set of functions that protocols can call. This new version is used by the Oxford protocol, a proposal for the successor of Nairobi on Tezos Mainnet. V18.0~rc1 includes the Oxford protocol itself along with its executables (baker, accuser, etc.).
Adaptive Issuance and Staking. Version 18 of Octez implements new client commands for staked funds management, and to allow delegates to configure their staking policies – see “Adaptive Issuance and Staking” for further details. It also supports the protocol’s additional feature activation vote via a dedicated option: --adaptive-issuance-vote in the baker executable. The use of this flag by bakers is optional, and defaults to Pass if not present.
Renaming endorsements to attestations. Starting with Nairobi, “(pre)endorsements” have been renamed to “(pre)attestations”. This new naming convention is adopted by Octez version 18. RPCs now accept both ''endorsement" and “attestation” as input and/or output. Note that the RPC versions using “endorsement” are now deprecated and will be removed by the next Octez major version (v19.x). In addition, client, baker, and accuser executables use “attestation” instead of “endorsement” in error messages and events.
Data Availability Committees. This release candidate also includes new DAC experimental executables. Users can integrate a DAC in their Smart Rollups workflow to achieve higher data throughput and lower gas fees.
Improvements. Octez version 18 improves performance, notably to the block validation process: total validation time is halved on average, resulting in a reduced block propagation time. It also updates the Nairobi protocol plugin to discard operations with invalid WASM proofs earlier. As Octez version 17 also includes the Nairobi protocol (which is active on Tezos Mainnet, v17.3 has been released to backport the plugin update.
Full Changelogs and update instructions are available in the version 17 and version 18 release pages.
The Git tag for the v18.0 release candidate is v18.0~rc1 and the corresponding commit hash is f59e1b0eaa26e97a23824dc4fbd4af2bd8fcf8af.
The Git tag for the v17.3 release is v17.3 and the corresponding commit hash is b2bc6d7f56171a259bd08732f008e7ffa1c9a120.
