The Stellar Development Foundation has scheduled a Nov. 23 vote on Bell, Protocol 30, a proposed Stellar upgrade that would let businesses identify customer deposits while using one smart contract.
The vote for the live network is set for noon ET (17:00 UTC). Bell would take effect only if Stellar validators approve it, and the foundation said the schedule could change.
The smart-account change addresses a scaling problem for exchanges and custodians holding customer funds. Under the current approach described by the foundation, a service needs a separate smart contract for each customer.
Bell would let a service use a contract address carrying a customer identifier. That identifier would appear in the transfer event, giving the service a way to match an incoming deposit to a customer while using one contract for many customers.
Another part of Bell concerns spending authorization. A smart contract could check an ML-DSA post-quantum signature and require it for a contract-based account. Stellar would continue to use Ed25519 for network transaction signatures.
Bell would also add a separate field for ledger close times measured in milliseconds. The existing closeTime field would continue to report whole seconds. The added precision would allow future upgrades to set more exact timing targets, but Bell itself would not shorten Stellar’s roughly five-second close time.
The foundation said September’s Adapter upgrade reduced close times from about 5.7 seconds to five seconds. Developers working on wallets, exchanges and other services would need to update software that processes the new addresses or reads raw ledger data.
Validators are scheduled to vote first on the testnet, a trial network, Nov. 3 at noon ET (17:00 UTC). The foundation said that date and the Nov. 23 vote could change.
