Bor v2.5.3 is a maintenance release that brings several key improvements, security enhancements, and bug fixes.

This version is compatible with both mainnet and Amoy and does not change any behavior related to the upcoming Madhugiri hard fork scheduled for Tuesday, Dec 9th.

Here are the most important highlights:

Performance Improvements

BlockSTM (parallel transaction processing) has been re-enabled for non-witness producers. This was done after confirming that earlier issues were specific to witness generation. This change leads to significant performance gains, with tests showing that block processing is, on average, 12% faster.

Enhanced Observability

New PebbleDB metrics have been added to Prometheus for better observability of database read/write operations. Node operators can now monitor key performance indicators such as:

• readamp
• writeamp (total and per level)
• file/sst/created
• file/sst/deleted
• file/wal/created
• file/wal/deleted

Security Enhancements

This release ships with several security improvements, including:

• Rejection of blocks with a difficulty value greater than 64 bits.
• Improved security for the gRPC connection to Heimdall.
• An update to the Go version and other dependencies.

Bug Fixes and Other Changes

• A bug in the `rawdb` component has been fixed, ensuring the ancient database offset is correctly applied to the freezer.
• The transaction pool (`txpool`) continues to be aligned with the latest Geth implementation.