IRISHUB 2.0 Mainnet Upgrade | Pre-Announcement

— The IRISHUB 2.0 upgrade will begin on April 17. Here’s what you need to know

IRISnet

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IRISnet Blog

4 min readApr 11, 2023

IRISgardians,

IRISHUB 2.0 mainnet upgrade is scheduled at block height 19514010, around 05:30:00 UTC on April 17. The testnet will be upgraded soon and an on-chain upgrade proposal be submitted on April 12. In this blog post, we’ll have a quick review of the new features and outline the upgrade schedule, method and notes. Read on for details!

Feature Highlight: EVM integration

The most significant update in IRISHUB 2.0 is the support for EVM, allowing for the integration of EVM-based smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) into the IRISHUB ecosystem.

IRISHUB 2.0 will also introduce a new fee token for EVM transactions, created by converting IRIS at a conversion rate of 1:1. Customized to fully support EIP-1559, the EVM in IRISHUB 2.0 ensures that a significant portion of gas fees consumed by EVM smart contracts will be burned, while the remaining portion will be distributed as revenue to IRISHUB delegators and validators. This community-oriented approach suggests that IRIS could experience deflation if there’s significant EVM gas consumption, fostering mutual benefits and shared interests among all IRISHUB community members.

Supported by a mature and well-established ecosystem, the EVM integration will bring a wealth of resources for IRISHUB builders to create more diverse dApps and use cases.

Base Library Upgrade

As in our previous upgrades, some base libraries including cosmos-sdk and tendermint will be updated to improve stability and compatibility:

cosmos-sdk → v0.46.9
tendermint → v0.34.26 (dependent on cosmos-sdk v0.46.9)

Since the Game of NFTs (Phase-2 Hackathon is now open for registration), we plan to load and enable the ICS-721 implementation in a subsequent upgrade.

Schedule

Upgrade Method

The upgrade procedure includes 1) Submission of the on-chain upgrade proposal📃-> 2) voting period🗳️-> 3) execution of the mainnet upgrade⚙️

Previously, we mentioned that the IRISHUB 2.0 mainnet upgrade would employ a hard fork method and explained its benefits. However, during pre-release testing, we found that this approach could adversely impact the normal operation of current IBC relayers, resulting in IBC malfunction after the upgrade. Consequently, we have decided to fall back to the normal smooth upgrade approach. Once the upgrade is completed, the mainnet snapshot feature will be restored to normalcy, effectively mitigating the rapid resource growth issue faced by validator nodes. Other features of this upgrade plan remain unaltered.

Timeline

The estimated timeline of key upgrade events are as follow:

*Note that the actual timeline will be subject to the upgrade proposal.

>> 2023/4/11: Testnet Activation
The nyancat testnet will soon be upgraded to allow nodes, validators and other service providers to test out IRISHUB 2.0 features. Join testnet via Discord server (# 😼-testnet-nyancat).

>> 2023/4/12: On-chain Upgrade Proposal Submission
On April 12, an on-chain upgrade proposal including basic upgrade info and more details will be submitted for voting.

>> 2023/4/12–4/17: Voting Period
The voting period of the upgrade proposal will begin once the minimum deposit requirement is met, and will last for 5 days until April 17.

>> 2023/4/17: Upgrade Execution
If the proposal passes, the IRISHUB 2.0 upgrade will commence at block height 19514010, around 2023–4–17 05:30:00 UTC.

Upgrade Notes

1. Since IRISHUB 2.0 is set to integrate EVM, once the node reaches the upgrade height and halts, you’ll need to add EVM-related configuration to the app.toml file.

*The cosmosvisor automatic upgrade will be unavailable, you’ll have to modify the app.toml configuration manually.
*For specific configuration instructions, please refer to the mainnet upgrade proposal.

2. The recommended default configuration for ports 8545–8546 is for local access only.If you need to enable external access, you can modify the configuration according to your needs. However, if you decide to open external access to the EVM JSONRPC, we strongly recommend that you avoid storing the mnemonic or private keys of validators or other wallet addresses on the machine.

3. Since this upgrade will fix the node pruning issue, `pruning=nothing` will no longer be required when starting the node.

Feel free to contact us on Discord should you require any support!

Join Testnet!

We strongly encourage all validators, node operators, wallets, explorers, and exchanges to test out all functionalities on our testnet to get ready for the upcoming upgrade.

The nyancat testnet will be upgraded soon, please join via >>Discord<<