Staging for MainNet 2.0.4 Upgrade

Protocol version 2.0.4 upgrade will occur at Era 19665, around 2025-10-01 14:46 UTC.

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Note: As we have been communicating for some time, staging this upgrade requires Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04, or Debian 13.
If your node is running Ubuntu 20.04, you must either:

• upgrade the OS in places
• or create a new upgraded node, sync, and then move your node.

You can confirm your OS version with:

lsb_release -a

Example output (showing an unsupported system):

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS
Release:        20.04
Codename:       focal

Repo for software

Make sure you are also using jammy repo with instructions at [text](https://repo.casper.network/).

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Staging the Upgrade

Run:

sudo -u casper /etc/casper/node_util.py stage_protocols casper.conf

This should show 2_0_0 already staged and 2_0_4 now staging.

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Testing the Binary

cd /var/lib/casper/bin/2_0_4
./casper-node --version

• If your system is compatible, you will see:

  casper-node 2.0.4-dfa77e7
  

• If your system needs an upgrade, you will see an error and the node will not function at the upgrade point unless the OS is upgraded:

  ./casper-node: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
  

casper-client

New guardrails for staking are in place along with the casper-client version 5.0.0.

sudo apt install casper-client should upgrade you to 5.0.0 if you have not done so prior to this release.

casper-sidecar

If running RPC, make sure to check for sidecar updates as well with sudo apt install casper-sidecar.