The Helicon upgrade is scheduled to activate on Fuji Testnet on July 28 at 11:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time. It introduces automatic validator staking renewal, reduces the minimum staking period from two weeks to 48 hours and raises the validator uptime requirement from 80% to 90%.

On C-Chain, Helicon separates transaction execution from consensus so the two processes can operate in parallel. It also introduces a validator-governed minimum gas price intended to help the network respond to spam.

This is a testnet activation, not an immediate Avalanche mainnet upgrade. After Fuji is tested, developers plan to publish a mainnet-compatible release. Node operators must account for new staking behavior and the brief gap between block acceptance and final application of transaction results.