Dev Update September 7, 2026

News and Announcements
1

Dev Update

1. Last Week by the Numbers

neptune-core

  • Pull Requests: 1 merged

2. Stand-up Summary

Alan Szepieniec

  • Last Week: Resolved final blocking issues on the transaction chaining branch, making it ready for review and merge. Initiated technical discussions on core architectural boundaries, mempool payment monitoring, order book handling, and development workflow policies.
  • Coming Week: Document thoughts on order book management.

Thorkil Værge

  • Last Week: Resolved a critical packing vulnerability using a backwards-compatible fix, clarified light node data-retrieval boundaries, proposed a privacy-preserving mempool endpoint, and established PR merge ownership and codebase comment quality standards.
  • Coming Week: Scrutinize the “weld” branch to verify its technical soundness before merging into master.

3. Technical Discussion

  • Core Codebase Boundaries & Downstream Responsibilities: Smart contract protocols and order book management will remain strictly external to the core engine to preserve performance. Core nodes will focus on native currency functionality, while downstream wallet software will manage order book tracking, membership proofs, and archival node queries.
  • Mempool Endpoint & Payment Tracking: Addressed privacy-preserving mechanisms for tracking incoming payments. Proposed an endpoint returning 128-bit transaction announcement flags, allowing wallet software to filter mempool transactions locally without leaking privacy or depending on a trusted server.
  • Packed Chunk Capacity Vulnerability: Resolved an exploit where an attacker could grind sender randomness to exceed packed chunk capacity and potentially freeze funds. The fix removes canonical length representation requirements without forcing packing uniqueness, maintaining full backwards compatibility for mainnet history while preserving simple interface design.
  • Development Workflow Policies:
    • PR Merge Ownership: Enforced a policy where the PR opener is responsible for merging their PR, barring explicit exceptions or waiting periods.
    • Weld Integration: The weld branch merge into master is conditionally blocked until code soundness is fully verified.
    • Comment Quality: Agreed to delete or rewrite unclear or unnecessarily verbose LLM-generated codebase comments.
    • CI Commit Signing: Shelved a proposal to implement CI checks requiring signed commits.

4. Updates and Announcements

  • Hard Fork Schedule: Activation is confirmed for block height 55,000.
  • Version 17 Release: Software version 17 will be released shortly to ensure full network compatibility for the upcoming hard fork.