News

Curated news from the Algorand ecosystem

Protocol Developer Other Governance

Algorand v5.0 brings cross-app box access and new hash opcodes to the AVM

Covered by 2 sources

Summarized by AI

Algorand v5.0 activated on mainnet in August 2026, expanding the AVM (the virtual machine that executes smart contracts) with larger program limits, cross-app box access, and native SHA512 and Poseidon2 opcodes. The upgrade was completed by thousands of node runners.

Programs on the AVM now support up to 16,384 bytes and can be modified after deployment. Cross-app box access lets any app read the storage boxes of another. The new 64-byte SHA512 and Poseidon2 opcodes are designed to support zero-knowledge app development natively.

Sources that covered it

@Algorand Last month, thousands of node runners upgraded Algorand to v5.0. That upgrade brought a much more powerful AVM to mainnet: larger programs, cross-app box access, SHA512, Poseidon2 and more. The AVM… @fredestante 📢 Your Weekly @Algorand Ecosystem Roundup 📢 Follow this 🧵 for a coverage of @AlgoFoundation's ecosystem news in the week of September 20th, 2026! 🧵 1/44👇 https://t.co/mZWJiqAiKk

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