Feature Gate Activation Guidelines

Feature gate activations are prioritized and scheduled in the Feature Gate Tracker. Access to the Tracker is restricted because activations are often affected by security concerns which can't be discussed openly. In order to be as transparent as possible we:

1. Publish the Feature Gate Tracker Schedule
2. Post in #<cluster>-feature-gates on Discord
3. Publish these guidelines for how feature gates are scheduled

The scheduling of feature gate activations is be based on the following principles:

• Feature gates are ordered by priority.
• Feature gates must be activated in the same order on each network.
• Feature gates must be activated on testnet, then devnet, then finally mainnet-beta.
• Some feature gates will need to be soaked before being activated on the next network, soaking will delay all lower-priority feature gates, exceptions will occur.
• Feature gates should be activated one at a time per network, exceptions will occur.
• Feature gate are generally not activated at epoch boundaries that occur on a weekend.

There are exceptions to these guidelines.

If you believe you should have access to the Feature Gate Tracker please contact the Anza devops team in Solana Discord #devops. If you have concerns about a specific feature gate please contact its owner or another core contributor.