Pocket Network is upgrading to v1.31 on February 10th at 11AM EST. This is a consensus-breaking change. All validators must coordinate in the #upgrades channel on Discord before the upgrade height, which will be set on February 9th.
If you run a validator and you’re not in that channel, stop reading this and go join it. The rest will be here when you get back.
What’s in the Box
Three categories: new economic tooling, consensus safety hardening, and operational improvements. The short version for token holders is that PIP-41 is now on mainnet; the short version for suppliers is that your valid proofs will stop getting rejected during parameter transitions. Both of those matter more than they sound.
PIP-41: Governance-Controlled Deflation
This is the headline. A new mint_ratio governance parameter (default 1.0) controls what fraction of burned tokens get re-minted during settlement. Set it below 1.0 and the supply starts shrinking. No code upgrade required to activate; governance submits a parameter change and deflation begins at the next session boundary.
Pocket Network becomes, to our knowledge, the first web3 protocol to implement programmatic deflation through core tokenomics design rather than manual burns or one-off mechanisms. The tooling is live, and will be starting with a default rate of 2.5% deflation.
Consensus Safety Fixes
The bulk of engineering effort in v0.1.31 went into a class of bugs that share a common root: the network was evaluating historical claims against current state rather than the state that existed when relays were actually served.
Governance parameter changes (session length, supplier count, and others) now take effect at session boundaries rather than immediately. Relay mining difficulty is validated against the difficulty that was active during the session, not whatever the difficulty happens to be now. A bug where supplier re-staking could retroactively mutate historical session data has been fixed; deactivation timestamps on already-scheduled configs were being overwritten, causing past sessions to resolve with wrong supplier lists.
The combined effect: claim and proof validation now evaluates against the actual network state at the time of service. If you’re a supplier who’s had valid proofs rejected during parameter transitions, that’s over.
Admin Morse Account Recovery
Given that the migration is now nearly 8 months behind us, we are expanding the manual recovery whitelist to include all unclaimed accounts. PNF can now recover Morse migration accounts immediately after off-chain verification, removing the multi-week code-release cycle that was previously required. The full on-chain audit trail is preserved. If you’ve been waiting on a Morse account recovery, the turnaround just got significantly faster.
Under the Hood
A few things that won’t make headlines but matter for network stability: CometBFT upgraded to v0.38.19 with security patches. Memory allocations in the session keeper that caused OOM crashes under load have been reduced. Orphaned supplier service config index entries from earlier versions are proactively cleaned up. Settlement processing got pre-allocated data structures and batched telemetry for high-volume claim processing.
PNF also received 12 additional on-chain authority permissions including upgrade management and migration operations, preparing for the completed transition from Grove to PNF as primary network authority.
Validator Coordination
This is a consensus-breaking upgrade. Your node will halt at the upgrade height if you haven’t updated the binary.
The upgrade height will be announced on February 9th. The timeline:
- February 9th, 6PM EST — Upgrade height announced, final pre-release communications
- February 10th, ~10AM EST — Snapshot preparation (one hour before upgrade)
- February 10th, 11AM EST — Upgrade goes live
Join #upgrades in the Pocket Network Discord for real-time coordination. If you delegate to a validator, reach out to them and confirm they’re tracking.
What This Means
v0.1.31 went through multiple betanet iterations before reaching mainnet. The consensus fixes alone would justify the upgrade; they eliminate an entire category of false proof rejections that suppliers have been dealing with. PIP-41 on top of that gives governance a new and powerful economic lever.
The deflation mechanism is live. The consensus engine is more robust. The operational authority structure is where it needs to be. Shannon continues to mature.
Upgrade details and validator coordination: Discord #upgrades Release notes: GitHub