The Forte Network Upgrade: Now Live On Flow

Build Advanced Apps with Fully Onchain Scheduled Transactions

Flow now supports Scheduled Transactions, the first of its kind, fully native onchain time scheduler that lets apps run tasks automatically, like a cron job for blockchains, without any external trigger or human intervention once programmed. So applications are no longer restricted to being reactive only to user transactions.

Scheduled Transactions enable apps to execute highly complex and automated strategies, for example DeFi protocols that proactively rebalance, settle, and sweep, on a schedule, all without external keepers. They run natively on the network, which simplifies operations, reduces off-chain dependencies, and makes behavior auditable and predictable in code. For builders, this means fewer moving parts to deploy, fewer operational scripts to maintain, and a cleaner path to automation-heavy use cases that feel instant and reliable to end users.

Start building today: Scheduled Transactions Tutorials

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Native Mobile Onboarding for Consumers with WebAuthn and Passkey Support

Flow has integrated native WebAuthn support to the protocol: you can now authorize transactions with passkeys and other WebAuthn credentials (supported natively by any smartphone). The Access API and Cadence VM have been extended to accept and validate WebAuthn signatures, enabling device-backed credentials from iOS, Android, browsers, and password managers to sign transactions. Flow Wallet will be integrating WebAuthn in the near future.

For users, passkeys eliminate the need for seed phrases while preserving self-custody and secure cross-device portability. Wallets and applications can take advantage of widely adopted WebAuthn implementations in browsers and operating systems, which makes integration simple. For example, with Flow’s native account abstraction model and onchain passkey support, developers can build smart wallets on Flow without relying on additional smart contract layers like ERC-4337. 

This work implements FLIP 264: WebAuthn Credential Support, bringing standard WebAuthn authentication to Flow accounts without breaking existing flows.

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Descriptive, AI- and human-friendly Cadence errors

Cadence compiler and linter errors are now designed for AI assistance, making it easier for agents and IDE copilots to fix issues automatically. Messages for common problems, including pre-Cadence 1.0 keyword changes like pub, have been rewritten to explain the cause, suggest concrete fixes, and link directly to reference docs and migration notes. 

These enriched primary and secondary messages are also surfaced through the Cadence language server, so tools like Cursor and other agent-based editors can follow the link, apply the recommended change, and validate the result. The outcome is faster feedback, fewer round trips to documentation, and a smoother path for AI agents that refactor or migrate Cadence code, all of which advances Flow’s goal of first-class developer experience for agent-powered workflows.

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High-precision DeFi with 128-bit fixed-point types in Cadence

Cadence now supports Fix128 and UFix128, 128-bit fixed-point types enabling precision up to 24 decimal places for advanced DeFi, risk engines, interest accrual, and other finance-heavy workloads. These types expand numeric range while preserving fine fractional precision, and all existing Fix64 and UFix64 values convert losslessly to their 128-bit counterparts. In contrast, most Ethereum contracts rely on integer math with token “decimals” rather than a native fixed-point type, which means Cadence’s built-in 128-bit fixed-point support removes much of the bespoke arithmetic scaffolding and reduces rounding-related errors in application code.

Read more about all the changes to Cadence via the Cadence V1.7.0 release notes.

Switching node database from BadgerDB to PebbleDB for more scalability

This release upgrades Flow node storage to PebbleDB to deliver better uptime, smoother operations, and lower total cost for operators. PebbleDB offers higher stability under load for our workloads, eliminating memory spikes, effective automated pruning of historical data, a modest performance edge in typical node operations, and broad ecosystem adoption that supports rapid improvements and long-term runtime reliability.

In practice, these strengths translate into more scalable nodes, simpler database management, and improved ROI for operators. Following the migration, measured outcomes show significant gains: depending on node type memory usage is improved by up to 80%, CPU usage drops by up to 60%, and annual disk usage is reduced by up to 30%.

As a result, the recommended hardware specifications for all node roles except Execution have been revised and lowered to reflect the improved resource efficiency. Updated hardware recommendations can be found here.

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More efficient state storage with account key de-duplication

Public key de-duplication streamlines Flow’s state while preserving the flexibility of multi-key accounts. Many apps intentionally reuse the same key to manage multiple in-flight transactions, since each key maintains its own sequence number. With de-duplication, when a previously added key is added again the state now references a single canonical entry instead of storing another copy, and existing accounts have been de-duplicated transparently.

The duplication problem before this upgrade is significant: over half of all keys (53%) are duplicates, and one in ten accounts (10%) contains duplicate keys. Removing duplicates cuts a large chunk of redundant data, shrinking Flow’s execution state by about 6% (21 GB out of 349 GB). Specifically, trimming 0.29 billion of the current 1.82 billion entries in Flow’s low-level storage trie, making state access leaner and faster. This translates to an estimated 6–18% reduction in memory used by Execution Nodes, and benefits any node or service that touches payloads by moving less data and finishing work sooner.

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Unlocking (near) real-time transaction results

Flow’s long-term vision for data availability is to enable clients and developers to trustlessly access Flow’s state with minimal latency. In practice, this is achieved through Access Nodes (ANs), which replicate block state and transaction results, serving them directly without relying on third-party services. Today, ANs replicate account data and results for sealed blocks only, avoiding the complexity of handling forks.

With Forte’s groundwork, ANs will soon be able to ingest account data and transaction results for both Cadence and EVM prior to finalization and sealing, with the ability to replicate and serve data across potential forks before they are subsequently resolved. Such low-latency access enables high-frequency DeFi apps to read state early (soft finality) and to gracefully handle rare rollbacks by simply retrying or revalidating once blocks are sealed.

A major milestone on the protocol roadmap has now been completed by hardening data integrity across the network. For every data structure exchanged between nodes, a canonical, verifiable identity can be computed locally (via a collision-resistant hash) and checked against the value prescribed by protocol rules. This ensures that if a message arrives, any modification to any field is immediately detected by the recipient. In other words, an honest sender can be assured that its message, once delivered, is received by other honest nodes exactly as it was sent, regardless of potentially Byzantine intermediaries relaying it.

Beyond Byzantine threats, accidental storage bugs could corrupt committed data and cause honest nodes to be slashed. To prevent such cases, a custom linter was developed that flags illegal mutations of protected data structures already during development.

This also gives developers and AI agents a simpler mental model: network messages can be treated as immutable objects with stable identities.

Read more about Advancing Protocol Autonomy with Data Integrity

The Forte network upgrade builds on Flow’s technical architecture, moving the protocol forward across multiple areas simultaneously. By delivering protocol-native automation and enhanced features directly to developers, while simultaneously driving up core efficiency and resilience across node operations, this upgrade establishes Flow as a high-performance foundation ready for the next wave of consumer finance. 

Forte, combined with the safety and power of the Cadence language and the built-in fairness of native MEV resistance, makes Flow the most technically capable network for supporting complex, high-scale financial applications in the ecosystem for years to come.

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Get started building with the new Forte tutorials

You can read the full release notes on the Forte upgrade to see a full list of all the commits and changes that went live with this network upgrade.