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To whom it may concern,

The Monero development community has scheduled its biannual upgrade for block 1788000 on approximately March 9. This includes several consensus changes, so the upgrade is mandatory.

This upgrade is moved forward approximately one month to patch some important security components. This upgrade includes the following changes:

1. A new Proof of Work algorithm, CryptonightR

2. A new dynamic block size algorithm

3. Slightly smaller transactions

4. Payment ID changes for improved privacy

5. Notification changes (see: https://paste.debian.net/hidden/0d0d3694)

As far as the Monero development community can tell, this is a non-contentious fork, and no chain splits are expected as there is a reasonable expectation of users upgrading their software. That said, and especially if you are running a critical service, everyone should be aware of the possible risks of claiming funds (airdrops) on different chains. More information: https://youtu.be/6CVcirD90pg

To prepare for the network upgrade (hardfork), the Monero development community will release several clients before. Users must upgrade their software to continue using Monero after the upgrade. A visual depiction of the release engineering can be found here: https://i.imgur.com/gGz9dwK.jpg

The stable Monero release 0.14 will be available very soon, within the next week. This will contain the consensus changes necessary to continue using Monero, but is based off the current stable release. An alpha release 0.14.1 RC1 will be released soon after, once the fork has occurred and everything has settled down. This release will be based off the current master branch, where active development happens. The Monero development community recommends users of critical services use 0.14, and users who want to help test should use 0.14.1 RC1. This 0.14.1 release will follow the expected release engineering path, with a 0.14.1 stable being released once sufficient testing has occurred. Once this happens it is safe (and recommended) for all services to upgrade to take advantage of the current features, privacy protections, bug fixes, and enhanced security of that version.

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