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🚫 NOT FOR MAINNET · TESTNET ONLY ✅
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Caution
This is a release candidate for testnet only — do not run it on mainnet.
This supersedes v5.0.0-rc.1. Further v5 RCs may follow if critical issues are found in rc.2.
Second release candidate for Aztec v5, rolling up fixes and hardening found while running rc.1 on testnet.
aztec-up install 5.0.0-rc.2Docker image: aztecprotocol/aztec:5.0.0-rc.2
Testnet operators should run this release starting from 2026-06-30 12:00 UTC, after the testnet v5 rc.2 upgrade has been executed. After that time you may stop running v5.0.0-rc.1.
Highlights since rc.1
- Networking hardening — gossipsub message-id framing and topic restrictions, ENR address-parsing guards, and bounds on declared contract-class bytecode length.
- Archiver & state validation — checkpoint attestations verified from calldata before fetching blobs, archive root verified during block sync to reject divergent state, re-published protocol contracts treated idempotently.
- Consensus & proving — oversized checkpoint proposals (beyond the per-checkpoint block limit) are now slashed as a broadcasted-invalid-block-proposal offense, out-of-range checkpoint header fields are rejected at propose time, and epoch-proof fees are protected against an unsound verifier.
- Node operability — nodes auto-shut down on an incompatible canonical rollup upgrade, the prover JSON-RPC API moved to the admin endpoint, and sequencers prune in the failed-sync fallback so the chain can recover.
- Stability — numerous deflaked tests and CI fixes across e2e, validator-client, world-state, and prover-node.
Note
Full release notes including breaking changes will be shared alongside the first stable v5 release.