Protocol Upgrade

This release will require a protocol upgrade.
This release contains a consensus protocol upgrade, which implements the following spec:
https://github.com/algorandfoundation/specs/tree/65b4ab3266c52c56a0fa7d591754887d68faad0a

Spec PR: #2286

Highlights

This release represents a major milestone in smart contract functionality, as well as serves as a vote for the future of governance on chain.

In this release:

• Governance vote - see https://algorand.foundation/news/algorand-governance-referendum
• Algorand Virtual Machine (AVM) v0.9
  • Control Flow
    • New OpCodes: callsub, retsub
    • Allow backward jumps or indirect jumps
    • Dynamic cost accounting
  • Opcodes: Math related
    • New OpCodes: shl, shr, divmodw, exp, expw, sqrt, log2
    • Byteslice arithmetic
  • Contract-to-contract composability - allow contracts to share scratch space in a transaction group
  • Createable IDs in gtxns (they are not really deterministic, but rather new app/asset idx are available for subsequent apps within a transaction group)
  • Increased Program Limits
    • Ability to pay for extra pages
    • Pool fees - as long as fees in a covered in a gtxn, allow 0 fee txns
    • Increase ASA URL size from 32 bytes to 96 bytes (better IPFS support for NFTs)
    • Combine clear and approval limits
    • Combine schema key/value sizes
  • Optimize int/byte constant in assembly
• Participation key registration improvements (e.g. check valid ranges)
• Miscellaneous optimizations and test improvements

Changes

1. AVM
   • New Features
     • Control flow (callsub, retsub; backward/indirect jumps; dynamic cost accounting)
     • New math opcodes (shl, shr, divmodw, exp, expw, sqrt, log2) and byteslice-oriented math
     • Add ability to pay for more program space
     • Allow future app call transactions to read the scratch space of previous transactions in the same transaction group for contract to contract composability
     • Combine Clear and Approval Program size limits
     • Combine app state key/value size limits
     • Expose creatable IDs to AVM code within the same group
     • Pool fees in a transaction group and allow one user to pay all fees
   • Enhancements
     • Allow AVM code to access a max number of foreign refs
     • Increase ASA URL size from 32 bytes to 96 bytes to support NFTs with longer IPFS URLs
     • Optimize constant assembly
     • Regularize access to "foreign" references
   • Bug Fix - check setbyte length properly
2. REST API
   • New Feature - add the AppsTotalExtraPages account field to the response returned by the /v2/accounts/{addr} endpoint
   • Enhancement - make account endpoint produce deterministic JSON
3. Agreement
   • Bug Fix - bug fix for proposal for a future round failing to be relayed
4. Catchup
   • Enhancement - catchup: speedup initial node DNS bootstrap time
5. Goal
   • Bug Fix - clean up goal wallet new output
6. Network
   • Enhancement - start network only after handlers registration is complete
   • Bug Fix - fix go vet error for string(int) conversion in TestWebsocketNetworkCancel
7. Node
   • Enhancement - improve fresh node startup time
   • Bug Fix - ensure stopping a node always stops KMD
8. Tools
   • Enhancements - deprecate auction code
   • Improve carpenter by adding timestamp
9. Tests
   • New Feature - integrate with codecov.io to attach coverage reports to PRs
   • Enhancements
     • Add PeerSelector and Catchup service tests
     • Add missing test for universalFetcher.go
     • Bandwidth stats for cluster tests
     • Disable compact certs and auction tests
     • Disable goal expect tests
     • Improve AVM tests
     • Improve TestRewardUnitThreshold predicate
     • Increase catchupaccessor code coverage
     • Temporarily disable TestBasicCatchpointCatchup test and reset timeouts
     • Temporarily disable TestPeriodicSync test
     • Use gotestsum instead of logfilter for test formatting
     • e2e sub assets-app speedup
     • sectok e2e faster
   • Bug Fixes
     • Fix asynchronous startup case for rekey upgrade test
     • Fix bug in TestApplicationsUpgradeOverREST
     • Fix data race accessing messagesOfInterest during network shutdown
     • Fix random TestAccountInformationV2 test failures by refreshing wallet handle
     • Fix random failure in TestConsensusVersion
     • Fixing a bug in eval and TestOnSwitchToUnSupportedProtocol
     • Protocol upgrade tests - AgreementFilterTimeout was not set correctly
     • Fix TestRekeyUpgrade when round=0
10. Other
    • New Feature - initial support for building CentOS Stream 8 RPM (still need publishing work)
    • Enhancements
      • Add mention of install_buildtools.sh to README
      • Fix docker builds after refactor: skip make deps
      • Modify build_release to match build_pr and remove ARM Deploy
      • Re-enable gofmt check during travis build
      • Refactor code generation verification
      • Remove ci-deps and update GOPROXY in Dockerfiles
      • Use minimal travis container since we install go ourselves
    • Bug Fixes
      • Fix incorrect gaid and gaids docs
      • Fix nightly test genesis file issue
      • If the branch is rel/nightly set channel to nightly
      • Fix crash that should be a clean error report for using substring wrong

Additional Resources

• Algorand Forum
• Developer Documentation