Devnet v1.17.1-beta is out. This is a prerelease, not mainnet, so don’t deploy production systems yet. Protocol version 20 ships with Dynamic Minimum Commission (IIP-8), validator scoring updates, and several changes across CLI, JSON-RPC, and the Rust SDK.

Protocol v20

• Dynamic Minimum Commission (IIP-8) is now active across all networks. It adjusts validator commission rates dynamically based on network conditions.
• New feature flag pass_calculated_validator_scores_to_advance_epoch decouples validator score calculation from score propagation in epoch advance transactions. When disabled, default scores replace locally computed ones. This flag is enabled on Devnet only.

Indexer Changes

• Extended statistics now account for column dependencies representing object types. Migration downtime could last several minutes during writer service restarts. Operators should plan upgrades around their SLAs.

Validator APY Updates

• Validator APY calculation now uses a 7-epoch mean with outlier protection. This applies to both JSON-RPC and GraphQL endpoints.

CLI Enhancements

• iota start now reads path values (db-path, genesis-file-location, migration-tx-data-path) directly from network.yaml and fullnode.yaml config files.
• New --client.env flag lets you select a specific environment for single commands in client and move subcommands.

Rust SDK Updates

• WalletContext::new now only requires a config path. Additional settings like timeout and max concurrent connections can be configured after creation.

Heads-Up for Operators

• Migration downtime for the indexer could disrupt services briefly. Plan upgrades carefully.

Full changelog: v1.17.1-beta

Sources: v1.17.1-beta, v1.17.0-alpha, v1.16.2, wallet-v1.5.3