Voting for the testnet protocol upgrade is scheduled to start at 2022-05-30 15:00:00 UTC.

Features

Introduced protobuf encoding as the new network protocol. Borsh support will be removed in two releases as per normal protocol upgrade policies #6672
Added near_peer_message_received_by_type_bytes #6661 and near_dropped_message_by_type_and_reason_count #6678 metrics.
Removed near_<msg-type>_{total,bytes} #6661, near_<msg-type>_dropped, near_drop_message_unknown_account and near_dropped_messages_count #6678 metrics.
Added near_action_called_count metric #6679
Removed near_action_<action-type>_total metrics #6679
Added near_build_info metric which exports neard’s build information #6680
Make it possible to update logging at runtime: #6665
Added a command-line flag to disable colored log output: #6779

Fixes

CODE_COLOR: CODE_YELLOW_TESTNET
RELEASE_VERSION: 1.27.0-rc.1
PROTOCOL_UPGRADE: TRUE
DATABASE_UPGRADE: FALSE
SECURITY_UPGRADE: FALSE