Stellar’s Soroban platform, which enables smart contracts on its blockchain, has just rolled out version 28 of its Rust SDK. The update brings a suite of changes aimed at simplifying contract development and improving the testing workflow.
At the core of the release is the introduction of spec shaking v2. This feature refines the contract interface specification, allowing developers to remove unused or deprecated entries more cleanly. By tightening the contract spec, the SDK reduces the surface area for potential bugs and makes it easier to maintain backward compatibility during upgrades.
Another significant addition is the migration‑friendly contract data handling. Contracts that rely on stored state can now transition between versions with less friction. The SDK provides utilities to map old data structures to new ones, ensuring that existing deployments remain operational after a contract upgrade.
The sparse events feature changes how events are emitted during contract execution. Instead of generating a dense stream of logs, the SDK now emits events only when explicitly triggered. This reduces on‑chain noise and can lower the cost of event processing for both developers and end users.
Executable references give developers a new way to link compiled contract binaries directly within their code. By referencing an executable, developers can avoid hard‑coding binary hashes and simplify the deployment pipeline.
Finally, the SDK now supports native contract uploads in tests. Test environments can upload and run native contracts without needing to go through the full deployment process. This speeds up unit testing and integration testing, allowing developers to catch issues earlier.
Together, these enhancements make the Soroban Rust SDK more developer‑friendly and efficient. Projects that rely on the SDK should update their dependencies and review the updated documentation to take full advantage of the new features.
The Stellar team has provided detailed migration guides and example code to help teams transition smoothly. By adopting SDK v28, developers can build more robust, maintainable, and performant smart contracts on the Stellar network.