Node Maintenance

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Updating a Node

As a decentralized network, every update to NEAR Protocol needs some coordination between end users, platforms, developers, and validators. nearup provides scripts to launch NEAR Protocol testnet and betanet nodes. Unless it is executed with the switch --binary-path, nearup will automatically update the local binaries if NEAR’s boot nodes fork the network and change the genesis checksum.

For security-critical applications and for validators, nearup can run a locally compiled binary of nearcore, but such updates have to be done manually. Since validators are responsible for creating new blocks, coordination in this process is necessary to avoid any network stall.

Nearcore Planned Updates

NEAR merges node updates from nearcore releases following the schedule shown on the public NEAR Community Google Calendar.

Typically, testnet and mainnet releases are four weeks apart to allow nearcore to be tested thoroughly on testnet before promotion to mainnet. From time to time, due to changes in engineering calendar and the nature of the release, release dates may change. Please refer to the NEAR Community Google Calendar for the most updated release dates.

  • testnet Monday at 15:00 UTC. The release tag is mapped with x.y.z-rc.1
  • mainnet Monday at 15:00 UTC (typically 4 weeks after testnet release). The release tag is mapped with x.y.z

Heads up

`betanet` provides cutting-edge testing grounds for validators, with daily updates and frequent hard-forks. For more information on nodes that are running on `betanet`, please see the [betanet analysis group on the governance forum](https://gov.near.org/t/betanet-analysis-group-reports/339).

Nearcore Emergency Updates

We may issue a [CODE_YELLOW_TESTNET] or [CODE_YELLOW_MAINNET] if the network is suffering minor issues, or a new software release introduces incompatibilities and requires additional testing.

NEAR Protocol team will use the tag [CODE_RED_TESTNET] or [CODE_RED_MAINNET] in the Validator Announcement channel on Discord, followed by email instructions for coordination. Some updates may follow a confidential process, as explained on nearcore/SECURITY.md docs.

NEAR’s team will be mostly active on Github, and with limited participation on Discord and Telegram.

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