Anza Halts Solana Testnet for Agave v4.4 Restart at Slot 457066979
By Node Zero
October 26, 2026
UPDATE — Solana’s public testnet was intentionally halted around 12:00 UTC on October 26, 2026 as part of Anza’s Agave v4.4 stabilization work. Anza’s operator wiki page 2026-10-26 Testnet Restart says the stop was previously announced on Discord and publishes the restart path operators need to rejoin the cluster. This is a scheduled testnet maintenance chapter — not a mainnet outage and not a claim that Agave v4.4 is already recommended for general mainnet adoption.
The restart snapshot is pinned to hard-fork slot 457066979. Operators are told to verify the latest optimistic slot at 457066978 with bank hash EuNFjT2f2qNjhBX1zvGTaezjkvnLopvJ5qSaHfStoPsw, then build the restart snapshot and hard-fork so the expected bank hash is Dq36Y8g1hrsRNCGJjTGhrBUoF8x7o1QuFYLFQPQy6W1e with shred version 52352. Agave validators add --wait-for-supermajority 457066979, --expected-shred-version 52352, and --expected-bank-hash Dq36Y8g1hrsRNCGJjTGhrBUoF8x7o1QuFYLFQPQy6W1e; Firedancer operators set the matching consensus fields. Nodes then wait for about 80% of activated stake at that slot to appear in gossip before normal production resumes.
Software pins on the restart page are explicit: Agave v4.4.0-beta.1 and Firedancer v26.10.4. That matches Anza’s v4.4 Release Schedule, which still marks today as the tentative window to ask mainnet-beta volunteers for about 10% of stake on v4.4 and to begin the testnet cluster restart procedure — after sliding those targets from October 19. The same wiki still leaves the Mainnet-beta Upgrade Candidate delivery date blank, keeps general adoption aimed at November 2, and resumes mainnet feature activation on November 9. Anza’s standing caveat remains: dates are tentative, and operators should wait for Discord announcements before upgrading or downgrading.
For NFT and crypto desks, the bid relevance is infrastructure cadence under Solana settlement rails — not a new PFP mint. Collectors and marketplaces that clear on Solana care whether testnet restart stake reaches the 80% threshold cleanly, whether Firedancer and Agave stay aligned on the published shred version and bank hash, and whether the separate mainnet 10% volunteer ask actually prints after Discord confirmation. Do not collapse today’s intentional testnet halt into a mainnet incident, and do not treat the beta pin as a finished MUC or a general-adoption green light.
Operator hygiene in the wiki is deliberately mechanical. After stopping the process, nodes verify the optimistic tip, create an incremental snapshot at 457066978, then hard-fork to 457066979 with hashes-per-tick set to sleep before rewriting startup flags. Firedancer configs must keep wait_for_vote_to_start_leader on auto, and operators can watch stake participation with agave-validator --ledger … monitor while the node logs that it is waiting for 80% of activated stake at the restart slot to appear in gossip. Those steps are the desk’s verifiable receipts for whether the planned halt is converting into a clean rejoining cluster.
Context from the desk’s Alpenglow coverage still sits beside this client schedule: mainnet Alpenglow chapters already tracked measured finality after the epoch flip, while Agave v4.4 remains the parallel path for later feature activation and the November adoption window. Today’s hard fact is the published restart package for slot 457066979 after the planned 12:00 UTC stop — a testnet-only stabilization beat that still feeds the same client-readiness story NFT venues inherit when Solana settlement depth matters.
Next protocol beat: Confirm testnet supermajority and resumed block production after slot 457066979, watch whether Anza Discord clears the mainnet 10% volunteer upgrade for Agave v4.4, and track the blank MUC delivery date against the November 2 general-adoption target.
Bottom line: Anza halted Solana testnet around 12:00 UTC on October 26 for Agave v4.4 stabilization and published a restart to slot 457066979 on Agave v4.4.0-beta.1 / Firedancer v26.10.4, waiting on ~80% stake — while mainnet’s 10% volunteer ask stays tentative pending Discord.
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