@Starknet All Core Devs Call #44 takeaways
Network's been stable since the January incident - no issues to report. The focus has shifted entirely to preparing for decentralized validation, and there's a lot happening under the hood.
@StarkWareLtd is deep in conversations with potential stakers to understand what they actually need to run validator nodes. Turns out when you're no longer running everything centrally, you need to think about observability, alerting systems, and key management solutions - things that weren't priorities before.
Sync time is a big consideration now. How long will it take validators to sync initially? What about after upgrades? These are practical questions that need answers before validators can realistically participate.
On the development side, new RPC crates were published today as developer versions. These are compatible with the upcoming RPC spec changes - but they're explicitly for testing only, not production. Stable versions will come closer to the next network release.
Client teams are moving fast:
Pathfinder (v0.21.5) is stable with no sync issues. They're cutting a pre-release for JSON RPC v0.10.1 testing with client-side proofs support. Fair warning: it requires DB migration and you can't roll back without a backup. They're also improving validator mode with concurrent execution and digging into Propeller implementation details from Starkware's code.
Juno's got something big coming - v0.15.18 will include a major DB optimization that cuts storage from ~700GB to ~360GB. That's nearly 50% reduction. They're making it opt-in first (v0.15.18, releasing today/tomorrow) with detailed docs, then default in v0.16 (mid-Feb). The migration is heavy but brings faster sync times and better RPC response times. They're also exposing tuning parameters for those who want to squeeze more performance.
@karnotxyz team synced Madara to Sepolia tip and is working on mainnet. They're seeing 2-3x performance gains with Cairo Native vs CairoVM which is huge for anyone running traces. SNOS v0.14.1 is still waiting on Dojo team review due to v0.14.1's two-proofs feature not being L3-compatible yet. They're focused on downstream pipeline improvements and processed 100K blocks across networks. Merkleization is their main bottleneck (60-80% of sync time), so that's the next focus. Working on RPC v0.10.1 compatibility with contributions to starknet-rs.
Small but important detail: JSON RPC v0.10.1 will release before network v0.14.2 compatibility which is a classic case of clients being ready before the network upgrades. Teams are aware.
Next call: Feb 12, 2026, 12:00 PM UTC
The march toward decentralized validation is real. Every team is either implementing consensus or optimizing for validator participation. Q1 2026 is shaping up to be infrastructure-heavy.