We are thrilled to announce that Alephium’s highly anticipated Danube network upgrade will activate on Tuesday, July 15, 2025, at 12:00 GMT+02:00!
Danube is not just another upgrade. It is a leap forward for Web3 usability, scalability, and security. This milestone brings Alephium closer to the Web3 experience we were all promised: fast, accessible, and truly decentralized.
What’s Coming with Danube?
Danube delivers new features that set Alephium apart:
8-Second Block Times & 2 Blocks Per Second (BPS) Network Throughput
Alephium now produces blocks twice as fast, matching leading Proof of Stake chains. Confirmations feel instant, boosting dApp responsiveness and user experience.
Optimized Consensus & Syncing
Alephium’s BlockFlow processes transactions more efficiently, enabling over 20,000 TPS and up to three times faster node sync. The result is greater scalability and decentralization with lower overhead.
Seamless Scalability with Groupless Addresses
Scaling without complexity. Alephium’s Groupless Addresses unify balances and abstract shard logic, making sharding invisible to users. Danube delivers the most advanced and user-friendly sharding implementation to date.
Secure, Seedless Onboarding
Native Passkey support enables login with Face ID, Touch ID, or YubiKey. Seed phrases are optional, lowering the barrier to entry and bringing Web2-grade ease to Web3.
Chained Transactions
Transaction caller’s assets can now be reused across multiple contract calls within a single TxScript (e.g., A→B→C swaps). This improves composability for dApps, streamlining complex flows without sacrificing the security benefits of the UTXO model.
Enhanced Developer Experience
Developers benefit from improved tooling, cleaner logic, and more expressive power: automatic handling of dust amounts, contract deposit and map entry deposit, I256 bitwise operations, and better mechanisms for caller identification simplify smart contract design.
Alephium combines the simplicity and security of Bitcoin, the programmability of Ethereum, and the speed of modern Layer 1s, all on a decentralized, energy efficient Proof of Work foundation.
The Danube upgrade builds on this foundation, bringing new features and improvements that make Alephium even more scalable, user friendly, and powerful.
🗓️ Key Date
Mainnet Upgrade Activation: Tuesday, July 15, 2025, at 12:00 GMT+02:00
⚠️ Node Operators: Important Information
The Danube upgrade activation is now scheduled for Tuesday, July 15, 2025, at 12:00 GMT+02:00. We have moved the date by one week to ensure all of our partners and node operators have ample time to update their nodes and prepare for a smooth transition! The new node version supporting Danube is now available. Please update to v4.0.0 before July 15 to ensure uninterrupted participation in the network.
You can download the required node version here:
https://github.com/alephium/alephium/releases/latest
For step-by-step instructions and more details on how to upgrade, please refer to our documentation: https://docs.alephium.org/integration/danube-upgrade/
📚 Learn More
For a deeper dive into Danube’s features and what this upgrade means for Alephium and Web3, check out our Danube Overview article: https://x.com/i/article/1920768112380571648
You can also find all content and updates related to the Danube upgrade in our Danube Content Repository.
With Danube, we’re one step closer to the Web3 we were promised.