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Testnet Changelog

This is a curated list of only changes affecting testnet.

note

We group changes into

  • protocol changes (generally requiring a new Revision)
    • generally tagged with [EVM], [Consensus], or [Network params]
  • RPC/SDK behavioral changes (generally tagged with [RPC])
  • performance changes
    • tagged based on the nature of the change as [EVM], [Consensus], or [RPC]
  • internal/node-ops changes (generally tagged as [Node ops])

v0.12.1 [2025-11-12]​

Revision: MONAD_SEVEN (unchanged)

Tags or hashes:

Notable RPC/SDK changes​

  • [RPC] Support for prestate and statediff tracing for the following RPC endpoints:
  • [RPC] New endpoint eth_createAccessList
  • [RPC] Fix serialization for to address in historical traces
  • [RPC] Remove artificial block height floor for eth_call and RPC queries
    • Previously limited queries using latest and safe block tags to finalized + 1, now uses actual latest voted block
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2148
  • [RPC] Fix RPC errors when requesting traces for call frames that include a self-destructing transaction
  • [RPC] Fix inconsistent results being reported when using state overrides in RPC calls
  • [RPC] Fix for a possible denial-of-service attack on RPC nodes by overriding balances in the staking contract

Notable robustness changes​

  • [Node ops/Consensus] Validators limit statesync service to validators and whitelisted full nodes
  • [Consensus] More intelligent txpool eviction logic
  • [Consensus] Start vote pacing timer on startup
  • [Consensus] Fix historical logs selfdestruct issue
  • [Consensus] Graceful handling of gas limit check
  • [Consensus] Remove 0-stake validator support
    • Support for 0-stake validators in the validator set was used as a workaround for lack of full-node support in the past and should no longer be supported
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2545

Notable performance changes​

  • [Consensus] Bias statesync requests to responsive peers
    • Support dynamic peer expansion/contraction
    • Nodes no longer panic if all peers are pruned (e.g., not whitelisted by any init peers)
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2536
  • [Consensus] Drop blocksync requests that hit disk after cache hydration (~7min after startup)
  • [Consensus] Dataplane: replace interval with sleep
  • [Execution] Replace data structures in VersionStack code to improve performance when pushing and popping EVM call frames

Notable internal changes​

  • [Node ops] Try fetching remote forkpoint.toml and validators.toml on startup
    • IMPORTANT: Nodes now automatically attempt to download configuration files from remote locations on startup, no "Soft Reset" required. This remote fetch is subject to a configurable remote threshold
    • The following env variables must be set to enable this behavior:
      • REMOTE_FORKPOINT_URL
      • REMOTE_VALIDATORS_URL
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2484, monad-bft PR #2534
  • [Node ops] Serialize forkpoints in both TOML and RLP formats, with RLP as source of truth; cleanup get_latest_config branches
  • [Node ops/Consensus] Dynamically expand statesync upstream peers
    • Always initializes to statesync.init_peers (no longer defaults to bootstrap peers)
    • If expand_to_group is enabled, expands to validator set (for validators) and/or secondary raptorcast peers (for public / prioritized full nodes)
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2535
  • [Node ops/Consensus] Full nodes no longer default to blocksync from validator set
    • Dedicated full nodes must specify upstream as blocksync override
    • IMPORTANT: prioritized/public full nodes can only blocksync after joining secondary raptorcast group. refresh_period and invite_lookahead recommended to be lowered to 20 seconds
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2532
  • [Consensus] Use epoch field to encode round number for secondary raptorcast
    • Fixes issue where syncing full nodes receive unsolicited chunks from expired groups
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2442
  • [Consensus] Add statesync server pending requests metric (better load visibility)
  • [Node ops] Import monad-execution API changes

v0.12.0 [2025-11-04]​

Revision: MONAD_SEVEN (upgrade; Wednesday, 2025-11-05 at 14:30 GMT)

Tags or hashes:

Notable protocol changes​

  • [EVM/Network params] Opcode/precompile repricing
    • Opcode pricing: increase cost of cold storage access
    • Precompile pricing: better align a few underpriced precompile gas costs with the associated hardware / latency costs
    • Ref: monad PR #1600 (for most of the repricings) and monad PR #1700 (for CREATE/CREATE2 repricing), monad PR #1830 (for reduced v2 scope), monad PR #1871 (activation for MONAD_SEVEN)
    • Gated by MONAD_SEVEN revision
  • [Consensus/Network params] [Staking] Increase BLOCK_REWARD_MON from 1 MON to 25 MON
    • Note that this is not gated by MONAD_SEVEN (execution hard fork) but by a specific epoch start for testnet
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2511

Notable robustness changes​

  • [Consensus] Consensus message prioritization in dataplane
    • Priority queues for UDP traffic ensure consensus messages are delivered before other traffic
    • All consensus messages to validators are published and rebroadcast with high priority
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2352, monad-bft PR #2354
  • [Consensus] DoS protection: Reject repeated invalid consensus messages
    • Prevents malicious validators from consuming CPU time by repeatedly sending invalid BLS signatures
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2445
  • [Consensus] Leader synchronization improvements
    • Forward AdvanceRound messages to current leader to prevent stale views due to message censorship
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2485
  • [Consensus] Validate group message sender authenticity

Notable RPC/SDK changes​

Notable performance changes​

Notable internal changes​

  • [Node ops] Docker support for local Monad installation
  • [Node ops] ledger-tail: New CLI configuration options
    • Supports custom paths for ledger, forkpoint, node config, and validators files
    • Fixes default validators.toml path
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2439
  • [Node ops] wal2json: Multi-file support with timestamp filtering
    • Fast timestamp seeking/filtering across multiple files (e.g., wal2json -a"3:30pm EDT" -b"4:00pm EDT" wal*)
    • Improved performance with parallel processing and reduced locking
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2496, monad-bft PR #2493

v0.11.6 [2025-10-30]​

Revision: MONAD_SIX (upgrade; Friday, 2025-10-31 at 13:30 GMT)

Revision: MONAD_FIVE (upgrade; Tuesday, 2025-10-28 at 13:30 GMT)

Tags or hashes:

Notable protocol changes - MONAD_SIX​

Notable protocol changes - MONAD_FIVE​

  • [Consensus/EVM] [Staking] Lower ACTIVE_VALIDATOR_STAKE from 25,000,000 MON to 10,000,000 MON
  • [EVM] [Staking] Add getProposerValId() method to return the val_id of the most recent block proposer

Notable RPC/SDK changes​

  • [RPC] Fix race condition in block number queries
    • Return triedb block number in ChainState to prevent errors when eth_getBlockNumber returns blocks not yet available in triedb
    • Fixes common wallet workflow issue with sequential eth_getBlockNumber and eth_getBalance calls
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2393
  • [SDK] Add call frame recording to execution events
    • Ref: monad PR #1541
    • These will not be recorded unless the --trace_calls command line argument is passed to execution
  • [RPC] Add monad_eth_call_executor_get_state() API for better visibility into eth_call requests
    • Ref: monad PR #1764
    • Returns counts of currently executing/queued requests and error counts

Notable robustness changes​

  • [Consensus] Deterministic timeout certificate tiebreaking
    • When TC contains multiple tips with the same round, tiebreak by tip.qc for consistency
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2460
  • [Consensus] Transaction nonce overflow validation
  • [Consensus] More consistent checks on EpochChange between block proposer and validator

Notable performance changes​

  • [EVM] Use komihash in StateDelta maps
  • [EVM] JIT compiler: only emit jump table for contracts with indirect jumps
  • [RPC] Improve eth call concurrency with atomic sequence numbers

Notable internal changes​

v0.11.3 [2025-10-14]​

Revision: MONAD_FOUR (upgrade; takes effect at 2025-10-14 13:30 GMT)

Tags or hashes:

Notable protocol changes - MONAD_FOUR​

  • [Consensus/EVM] Staking is live
    • (many PRs; see staking)
    • Active validator set is now determined by on-chain state of the staking precompile
    • This takes effect starting from a designated staking_activation epoch
    • Note: staking rewards do not activate until staking_rewards_activation epoch (future point in time)
    • External rewards - enable external (non-block-reward) deposits to the validator pool, see monad PR #1625
    • Also added additional events to staking precompile in monad PR #1742
      • Adds ValidatorRewarded, EpochChanged, ClaimRewards events
  • [Consensus/EVM] Reserve balance logic is live
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2160 and monad PR #1537
    • Due to async execution, consensus does not have the latest state available for transaction inclusion logic. Reserve balance is a buffer that enables simpler accounting for a given account to mitigate the possibility of overspending in that delay window.
    • Per-EOA reserve balance is set to 10 MON
  • [Consensus/EVM] EIP-7702 is live
  • [Network params] Set per-transaction gas limit of 30M gas
  • [Network params] Increase block gas limit from 150M gas (375 Mgas/s) to 200M gas (500 Mgas/s)
  • [Network params] Implement dynamic base fee
  • [EVM] Enable EIP-2935 + blockhash buffer
  • [EVM] Enable EIP-7951 (P256VERIFY precompile support)
  • [EVM] Enable EIP-2537 (BLS12-381 precompiles)
  • [EVM] Raise max contract size for CREATE/CREATE2 to 128 kb
    • Ref: monad PR #1440
    • This brings CREATE/CREATE2 to parity with toplevel contract creation transactions, which had their limit raised in MONAD_TWO.
    • Previously, they were unintentionally limited to Ethereum's max initcode size (49.152 kb) due to a bug

Notable RPC/SDK changes​

Notable performance changes​

  • [EVM] Kernel caching of db reads and writes
    • Ref: monad PR #1559
    • Utilize available host memory to cache recent DB operations - this cache should increase performance of execution and RPC
  • [RPC] Improve RPC Db Node Cache and make it memory bounded
    • Ref: monad PR #1581
    • Note a rename of RPC cli flags: --eth-call-executor-node-lru-size to --eth-call-executor-node-lru-max-mem and a new flag --triedb-node-lru-max-mem with both default to 100MB.

Notable internal changes​

  • [Node ops] Remove bft-fullnode binary; only bft binary now
  • [Node ops] PeerDiscovery: Introduce precheck for peer self name address
  • [Consensus] Blocksync: only select blocksync peers from connected nodes
  • [Consensus] Raptorcast: DOS protection on decoding state cache
  • [Node ops] Secondary raptorcast config change
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2378
    • Replace ambiguous secondary raptorcast mode parameter with enable_publisher and enable_client
  • [Node ops] Dynamically reload prioritized full-nodes
  • [Node ops] Fix wal2json
  • [Node ops/RPC] Support the RPC CLI param ws-sub-per-conn-limit
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2161
    • Sets the maximum number of websocket subscriptions per connection (default to 100)
  • [Node ops/RPC] Add configuration options for high eth-call pool

v0.10.4 [2025-08-18]​

Revision: MONAD_THREE (unchanged)

Tags or hashes:

Notable RPC/SDK changes​

  • [RPC] EIP-4844 related fields in RPC responses are removed.
    • Block headers returned from RPC will no longer have blobGasUsed , excessBlobGas, and parentBeaconBlockRoot.

Notable performance changes​

  • [Consensus] Votes are now sent to current round leader. This is a consensus optimization that reduces the effective delay due to a round timeout
  • [Consensus] Caching of recently-verified quorum certificates
  • [Node ops] Enablement of trace calls is now controlled via monad (execution) command line arg --trace_calls.
    • To preserve legacy behavior, --trace_calls is currently enabled in the debian package. In the future we recommend disabling for validators and enabling it for RPC and archive nodes.
    • This allows voting validators to opt out of computing traces since they're only needed for RPC nodes.

Notable internal changes​

  • [Consensus] TC forwarding to prioritized and public (non-dedicated) full nodes
    • Ref: monad-bft PR #2149
    • Prior to v0.10.4, all full nodes were subject to lagging behind validators in the event of a timeout because round advancement due to TC was not forwarded (and still isn’t to dedicated full nodes).
    • As a result, after timeouts, full nodes would frequently forward transactions to the next three leaders relative to a stale state. This results in those transactions often missing and the ensuing blocks being comparatively empty.
  • [Node ops] Bugfix for secondary raptorcast (round gap crash) that affected validators in Publisher mode
  • [Node ops] ledger-tail improvements
    • Reduced memory usage on startup
    • author_dns field changed to author_address to reflect change in v10 addresses
    • Timeouts and finalizations are tracked and logged
  • [Consensus] Txpool account preloading bugfix

v0.10.3 [2025-08-12]​

Revision: MONAD_THREE (upgrade; takes effect immediately - not time-gated)

Notable protocol changes - MONAD_THREE​

Notable RPC/SDK changes​

  • [RPC] Add support for real-time data via WebSocket and shared memory queue access (docs coming soon):
    • Geth real-time events (via WebSocket)
    • Geth real-time events with Monad extensions (via WebSocket)
    • Real-time data via shared memory queue, for programs on a full node host using the execution event SDK

Notable performance changes​

  • [Execution] Switch to JIT EVM. The bytecode of expensive or frequently-executed contracts is compiled directly to native code for faster execution
  • [Execution] Switch to using file pointer-based IPC to execute blocks. Previously, the client was using a write-ahead log (WAL), which did not take advantage of available consensus information and could result in avoidable execution

Notable internal changes​

  • [Node ops] Adds peer discovery
  • [Node ops] Adds full node RaptorCast, making the full node network scalable

v0.9.3 [2025-05-29]​

Revision: MONAD_TWO (unchanged)

Notable RPC/SDK changes​

  • [RPC] eth_call and eth_estimateGas limits
    • RPC providers can now set individual per-transaction limits on maximum gas for eth_call and eth_estimateGas
      • Previously the limit would always be the block gas limit (150M), now the RPC provider may choose (default: 30M)
      • Controlled with --eth-call-provider-gas-limit and --eth-estimate-gas-provider-gas-limit
    • Add a maximum timeout for queueing when executing eth_call and eth_estimateGas
      • Controlled with --eth_call_executor_queuing_timeout

Notable performance changes​

  • [RPC] Improve overall eth_call performance by maintaining separate queues for cheap and expensive eth_call operations, so that cheap eth_call operations will not be queued behind expensive ones.
    • This adds two new RPC error strings:
      • failure to submit eth_call to thread pool: queue size exceeded
      • failure to execute eth_call: queuing time exceeded timeout threshold
  • [RPC] Added an archive index for eth_getLogs to support queries with address and/or topic filters
    • This enables larger block ranges to be queried efficiently, with work proportional to number of matching logs instead of number of blocks in range
  • [Execution] Better bounding of TrieDB traversals

Notable internal changes​

  • [Node ops] Performance improvements for slow statesync client upsert
  • [Node ops] Bugfix for execution delay and abrupt history length drops caused by premature soft reset
  • [Node ops] keystore QOL improvements
    • Support for importing from a private key in hex string format (previously required conversion to json file)
    • More helpful documentation via --help command

testnet-1 active set expansion [2025-05-02]​

Notable internal changes​

  • [Network params] Testnet validator set expanded from 72 to 99 nodes

v0.9.2 [2025-04-05]​

Revision: MONAD_TWO (unchanged)

Notable performance changes​

  • [RPC] Update to the eth_call execution implementation - uses fewer threads to achieve the same concurrency as in v0.9.1

Notable internal changes​

  • [Node ops] Support for a faster statesync mechanism
  • [RPC] RPC no longer accepts requests while node is statesyncing
  • [Node ops] Some reliability and efficiency improvements to how statesync traffic is carried between nodes
  • [Node ops] Bugfixes for execution crashes (monad::mpt::deserialize_node_from_buffer, 'Resource temporarily unavailable)
  • [Node ops] Bug fix for unbounded blocksync requests that result in node OOM failures
  • [Node ops] Removal of DNS resolution panic on start up

v0.9.1 [2025-03-24]​

Revision: MONAD_TWO (unchanged)

Notable internal changes​

  • [Node ops] Bugfix for blocksync errors
  • [Node ops] Reliability and efficiency improvements to statesync

v0.9.0 [2025-03-14]​

Revision: MONAD_TWO (upgrade; takes effect at 2025-03-14 at 19:00 GMT)

Notable protocol changes - MONAD_TWO​

Notable RPC/SDK changes​

  • [RPC] debug_traceTransaction fixes
    • Fixed a bug where, within one transaction, only the first 100 calls were being traced
    • Added error and revertReason fields to response data

Notable performance changes​

  • [Consensus] Dataplane v2 - simpler and more efficient implementation; small performance improvement in broadcast time
  • [RPC] Improvements to RPC performance for eth_call
  • [RPC] Removed redundant sender_recovery operation on raw transactions received via RPC

Notable internal changes​

  • [Node ops] Statesync improvements to mitigate negative performance effects on upstream validator nodes
  • [RPC] EIP-2 signature validation added to RPC transaction validation
  • [Node ops] Miscellaneous tracing, logging and metrics additions
  • [Consensus] RaptorCast performance improvement when dealing with invalid symbols

v0.8.1 [2025-02-14]​

Revision: MONAD_ONE (upgrade; takes effect at 2025-02-14 at 19:00 GMT)

Notable protocol changes - MONAD_ONE​

  • [Network params] Block time reduced from 1s to 500 ms
  • [Network params] Block gas limit reduced from 300M to 150M (to keep gas limit consistent)
  • [EVM] Transactions are charged based on gas limit, not gas consumed

Notable RPC/SDK changes​

  • [RPC] UX improvements for transaction status. RPC nodes track status of transactions submitted to them in order to provide updates to users.