Introducing Arrowhead 6.0.0: What You Need To Know About Rootstock’s Upcoming Network Upgrade

Published on: 6 March, 2024

The Rootstock community has approved a set of consensus changes to be included in the upcoming Arrowhead network upgrade. Arrowhead will activate on Rootstock Mainnet on block #6,223,700. This is a mandatory upgrade; users who adhere to these changes must update their nodes to the latest version.

What is a network upgrade?

A network upgrade is a set of changes to the protocol consensus rules, which are activated at a defined block number. All nodes in the network need to run a compatible client version implementing these new consensus rules. Consequently, if you adhere to these changes, you must upgrade to the new client version before the network upgrade is activated. Otherwise, the non-updated nodes will remain on an incompatible chain.

What changes are included in Arrowhead 6.0.0?

The consensus changes included in this version are:

Introduce PUSH0 instruction (RSKIP-398)
Calldata gas cost reduction (RSKIP-400)
Introduce BASEFEE instruction (RSKIP-412)
Introduce getCallStackDepth precompiled method (RSKIP-203)
Bridge peg-out and migration transactions index (RSKIP-379)
Set version 2 to PowPeg migration transactions (RSKIP-376)
Fix pegnatories address derivation from public keys (RSKIP-415)
Avoid transactions to be reverted when Bridge method calls from smart contracts return an empty response (RSKIP-417)

For a detailed description of each consensus change introduced in this network upgrade, please refer to RSKIP 414 Network Upgrade: Arrowhead. You can also find a complete list of the changes introduced in the corresponding GitHub milestone.

When will the network upgrade happen?

Rootstock Arrowhead 6.0.0 will activate in Mainnet at block #6,223,700. According to the current conditions of the network, activation is likely to occur on April 3rd, 2024, at around 3 pm UTC. In the case of Rootstock Testnet, the upgrade will happen at block #4,927,100, which is expected to occur on March 20th, 2024, at around 3 pm UTC.

Please be aware that these dates can change depending on the conditions of the network, so it is recommended that users upgrade as soon as possible.

Is there anything I need to consider when upgrading to Arrowhead 6.0.0?

There is no other special consideration besides updating your node before the network upgrade activation happens at the defined block numbers.

RSKj Arrowhead 6.0.0’s sha256 sum is d3026daa1c4aa56741b4e45bb429d8d16d9bda664ebe3aa4394fe1fa13371769 rskj-core-6.0.0-ARROWHEAD-all.jar.

See the Reproducible Build guide for further details.

How do I report security vulnerabilities?

If you find a security issue, please contact us at security@iovlabs.org or report it through IOVlabs’ bug bounty program. We reward security experts, software developers, and hackers who dedicate time and effort to improving and protecting the Rootstock platform.

Do you have further questions?

Please contact us through our Rootstock Discord Server for technical questions and support.

You can also reach out with any feedback you would like to share with us through our social media channels and forums