Pactus Newsletter, June 2026
What Happened in June
June was an active month. A major release landed, the network dealt with a real protocol-level vulnerability and recovered cleanly, and a new proposal put the long-term reward economics of the chain up for community discussion.
Pactus 1.15.0 (Bucharest)
Released June 9, 2026. Bucharest is one of the more technically significant releases of the year. The headline addition is support for the Secp256k1 cryptographic curve, introduced through PIP-53. This is the same curve used by Bitcoin and most of the broader ecosystem, meaning Pactus can now derive addresses compatible with popular external wallets, including hardware wallets. The feature will be activated in the next protocol upgrade.
Bucharest also ships a Config Editor inside the GUI — no more manual configuration file editing — and migrates the GUI from GTK3 to GTK4, putting the interface on a more modern, maintainable foundation.
Shortly after Bucharest shipped, a critical vulnerability was identified (PIP-54): an integer overflow in the transaction validation layer that could be used to disrupt block production. The team responded quickly, patched it and documented the exploit and the fix publicly through the PIP process.
Important: If you are still on an older version, upgrade now. Outdated nodes do not produce blocks and do not earn rewards.
PIP-55: Block Reward Halving Schedule
A new improvement proposal was submitted to the community in June: PIP-55 proposes introducing a periodic block reward halving schedule, reducing the PAC reward per block at defined intervals over time.
This is a meaningful conversation for the community to have. Pactus was built on a flat reward model — one PAC per block, constant forever — specifically to avoid the wealth centralization effects that halving can create in a Proof of Stake system. PIP-55 challenges that design choice. Read the proposal, understand both sides, and make your voice heard.
Wrapto Bridge Update
The Polygon and Base WPAC bridge contracts on Wrapto were retired in June following a security incident.
Stay Connected
The Pactus community lives and grows across multiple platforms. Wherever you are most comfortable, show up, share ideas, ask questions, and help newcomers find their way.
Thank You
To every validator who upgraded without hesitation. To the developers who found, documented, and patched a live exploit in real time. To everyone weighing in on PIP-55 with actual arguments.
June tested the network and the community. Both held.
Let’s keep building.