Protocol Changes

Voting for the protocol upgrade is scheduled to start at 2022-08-17 15:00:00 UTC.
Stabilized protocol_feature_chunk_only_producers. Validators will now be assigned to blocks and chunks separately.
The validator uptime kickout threshold has been reduced to 80%
Total stake of kicked out validators will not exceed 30% of total stake
Edge nonces between peers can now optionally indicate an expiration time

Features:

The logic around forwarding chunks to validators is improved
Approvals and partial encoded chunks are now sent multiple times, which should reduce stalls due to lost approvals when the network is under high load
We now keep a list of "TIER1" accounts (validators) for whom latency/reliability of messages routed through the network is critical
/debug HTTP page has been improved
Messages aren't routed through peers that are too far behind
network.external_address field in config.json file is deprecated. In fact it has never been used and only served to confuse everyone #7300

CODE_COLOR: CODE_YELLOW_TESTNET
RELEASE_VERSION: 1.29.0-rc.1
PROTOCOL_UPGRADE: TRUE
DATABASE_UPGRADE: FALSE
SECURITY_UPGRADE: FALSE