Avalanche Activates Helicon Upgrade with New Execution Model

Avalanche has activated its Helicon upgrade on Mainnet, introducing a new C-Chain execution model designed to increase processing capacity and speed up receipt issuance during periods of high demand.

The upgrade, which went live at 11 a.m. ET (3 p.m. UTC) through AvalancheGo v1.15.0, combines six community proposals into a single feature: Continuous Execution. This separates consensus from transaction execution by placing accepted blocks in a queue while a concurrent executor processes their transactions.

Helicon has also changed validator requirements, reducing the minimum staking duration to 48 hours and increasing the effective uptime requirement for new validation periods to 90%.

The upgrade replaces the fixed minimum gas price with a dynamic floor that can be set by validators. The initial floor is 1 wei, which can change based on preferences.

A separate change starts a 90-day phase-in period that lowers Avalanche's minimum consumption rate from 10% to 7.5%.