Hedera Release Cadence Overview

2d ago•

HBAR

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By Greg Scullard

https://hedera.com/blog/hedera-release-cadence-overview

Release Overview Series

Introduction

Modern software platforms rely on frequent, reliable updates to stay secure and competitive. This blog provides an overview of Hedera’s release cadence and the reasoning behind its frequent updates.

Hedera releases software updates on a regular cadence, supplemented by occasional out-of-cycle updates to address urgent or critical issues that cannot wait for the next scheduled release.

Hedera determines the timing and rollout of these releases to the public network and supporting infrastructure, such as mirror nodes. As a guiding principle, Hedera strives to avoid breaking changes without prior communication and to ensure that any modifications are communicated well in advance. All releases are designed to be incremental and backward-compatible.

For years, Hedera’s mainnet has followed a monthly upgrade cycle, with exceptions only for time-sensitive security enhancements. Additional details about the upgrade process can be found in the Hedera release cycle overview.

This approach aligns with modern software development best practices. Frequent, incremental releases are widely recognized for improving code quality, minimizing deployment risk, and enhancing user satisfaction. Industry research and the operational models of leading engineering teams support the effectiveness of this strategy.

Benefits of Frequent Releases

Improved Code Quality and Faster Feedback

Frequent, incremental releases allow for smaller changes to be deployed. This minimizes complexity, making it easier to test and maintain high code quality. Thanks to continuous integration (CI) pipelines and automated testing, developers can identify and fix issues sooner in the development process.

Reduced Deployment Risk

Large, infrequent releases often bundle many changes together, making it harder to pinpoint and resolve regressions. With smaller, more frequent deployments, it’s easier to identify which changes introduced a bug, significantly reducing mean time to recovery.

Faster Innovation and Customer Responsiveness

Frequent releases allow organizations to roll out new features, enhancements, and bug fixes to customers faster. This improves responsiveness to customer feedback and strengthens market competitiveness.

Culture and Organizational Benefits

Frequent releases promote a culture of continuous improvement, accountability, and collaboration between development and operations teams (DevOps). This culture drives higher morale, clearer responsibilities, and better communication. Agile methodologies naturally support frequent delivery, encouraging shorter development iterations and continuous user feedback.

Drawbacks of Infrequent Releases

Infrequent release cycles introduce several significant challenges:

Increased Complexity: Larger codebases and more integrated changes are harder to test and verify.
Higher Risk of Failure: With more changes in a single deployment, the likelihood of something breaking increases.
Delayed Feedback Loops: Bugs or performance issues may go undetected for weeks or months.
Slower Time to Market: Valuable features or bug fixes may be delayed due to long release cycles, reducing competitive advantage.

Additionally, these challenges often discourage experimentation or innovation, as developers become more cautious about making changes that may delay the release schedule.

Upgrade Cadence vs. Feature Development Cycles

It’s important to distinguish between release cadence and feature development timelines. A feature may be in development and testing for several months before being promoted to previewnet, testnet, or mainnet.

It’s a common misconception that a monthly upgrade schedule means new features are only tested for a month before release. In reality, Hiero developers conduct extensive testing before code even reaches the testnet. Hedera then performs additional testing, as described in How Hedera Ensures Quality in Hiero Consensus Node Releases.

Use of Feature Flags

New features can be disabled using feature flags, which are set up in the network’s deployment configuration. This enables previewnet to support a feature in a given release that would not be enabled on mainnet or testnet in the same release.

This approach allows a feature to be enabled for testing on previewnet for longer than one or more release cycles. It has been used and will continue to be used to enable longer testing cycles when necessary.

The community is welcome to provide feedback on proposed Hiero Improvement Proposals (HIPs) or raise requests during Hiero Technical Steering Committee (TSC) meetings if they believe a particular feature would benefit from an extended testing timeframe.

Out-of-Cadence Upgrades

While the Hedera network follows a regular release schedule, if a critical defect is discovered that threatens the network’s security or user safety, an immediate upgrade will be issued to address the issue. Such situations are expected to be extremely rare.

Conclusion

Frequent software releases lead to higher code quality, lower risk, and faster value delivery. Supported by best practices from large companies and open source projects, frequent releases are clearly a key driver of high-performing engineering teams.

By following a consistent and incremental release cadence, Hedera and the Hiero are able to maintain stable, reliable, and adaptable infrastructure.

Hedera Release Cadence Overview

Release Overview Series

Introduction

Benefits of Frequent Releases

Improved Code Quality and Faster Feedback

Reduced Deployment Risk

Faster Innovation and Customer Responsiveness

Culture and Organizational Benefits

Drawbacks of Infrequent Releases

Upgrade Cadence vs. Feature Development Cycles

Use of Feature Flags

Out-of-Cadence Upgrades

Conclusion

Links

GitHub Repositories

Hedera Resources

Network Monitoring & Status

Community & Social

Linux Foundation / Hiero Participation

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