v0.16 Migration Report — Spork 21 Activation and v0.16.1

Dash Core v0.16.0.1 was released on Wednesday, September 30th, the first release of v0.16.x

Spork 21 Activation

I am happy to announce that the network has reached sufficient masternode adoption, reaching 79.0%. As such, we are planning to activate Spork 21 one week from today on November 17th. We encourage all remaining masternode operators to update immediately.

Miner Adoption — Expected BIP-9 Lock-In

Over the past 2500 blocks, ~76.0% of blocks signalled. The threshold in this window is ~76.8%. Based on these values, and current block signalling, I am expecting the BIP9-style hard fork to lock-in at block height 1370880 (November 13th) or the end of the next window at height 1374912 (November 20th).

Based on this forecasted lock-in date, the network is expected to fork on November 28th. There will be more communication about this once the BIP9 style hard fork has locked-in.

Masternode Adoption

While initial adoption was great, over the past few weeks, masternode adoption has significantly leveled off and currently stands at 79%. While “flattening the curve” may be preferable in some instances, this is not one of those!

Once Spork 21 is activated, upgraded masternodes will begin voting to increase the Proof of Service (PoSe) score of any masternode that is running an old version. We anticipate that this process will take between 7 to 11 days to ban all non-upgraded masternodes. This process is expected to start relatively slowly and speed up as more nodes get banned.

If your masternode is not upgraded to v16 it will be banned and then will not be paid.

Minor Version Release — v0.16.1

After the release of v0.16.0.1, we encountered a couple of bugs and implemented fixes that are valuable enough to deliver as a minor release. This release is currently in the release process and we are targeting a release this week on November 13. Feel free to take a look at the draft release notes.

This is a minor release, and is by no means a mandatory upgrade. Users of the wallet should upgrade to v0.16.1 if they encounter any bugs. Masternodes may see a small benefit in network usage by upgrading to v0.16.1. Miners do not need to upgrade to v0.16.1.