After all the talk and dramas around the upcoming 'Vasil' Hardfork your pools are now ready to fork into the 'Babbage' era of Cardano. All pools and associated nodes are now running the latest cardano-node 1.35.3.
A number of experienced stakepool operations including 🥝Kiwipool Staking had concerns about cardano-node 1.35.x that we wished to see allayed prior to upgrading. IOG was very helpful in allaying these concerns by setting up a fast-paced 2 hour epoch 'Mixed Testnet' known affectionately as the Yolonet for us to test against. Samuel Leathers of IOG has worked tiringly over the past few days, just as he has for the past several years, to help facilitate this. The Yolonet was tested extensively and intensively over a few days with a mixed assortment of cardano-node versions including the current version 1.34.1 and the proposed new version 1.35.3. Yolonet testing thankfully confirmed that bugs found in earlier versions of the 1.35.x generation cardano-node software were in fact fixed in 1.35.3. The Yolonet was then successfully 'Vasil-hardforked' into the Babbage era and, interestingly, 🥝KIWI made the first ever Yolonet Babbage block! We now wait until 75% of block production is made with cardano-node 1.35.3 before a hardfork date is announced. Much love to all 💚 🌍 Together, WE are 🥝𝘒𝘪𝘸𝘪𝘱𝘰𝘰𝘭 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 Matticus