Upgrade to metalgo 1.14.2 (Granite)

Last checked: 2026-09-24.

The Granite network upgrade activated on the Tahoe test network on 2026-09-21 at 10:00 UTC. Every Tahoe node still on metalgo 1.13.5 must move to metalgo v1.14.2-tahoe.

Who must act

You run	Action
A Tahoe node on metalgo 1.13.5 (validator or API node)	Upgrade to v1.14.2-tahoe now
A PulseVM chain on Tahoe	Upgrade metalgo and move to a PulseVM plugin with RPC protocol v45 support (see The PulseVM side)
A Metal mainnet node	Not affected by this Tahoe release

Why

Granite changes the P-Chain rules. A node on 1.13.5 can't validate blocks produced under those rules, so it stops following the P-Chain once post-Granite blocks are produced. It falls out of sync with the validator registry that every subnet and L1 on Tahoe relies on.

What's in it

metalgo v1.14.2-tahoe (published 2026-09-22, marked pre-release) enables Granite for Tahoe. It carries the upstream 1.14.x line. The Granite upgrade activates these Avalanche Community Proposals:

Proposal	What it does	Why it matters here
ACP-181 P-Chain epoched views	Validator sets are read from fixed P-Chain epochs instead of the latest P-Chain height	The basis for ACP-77 L1 validator management: adding and removing validators of a sovereign L1 through its validator-manager contract
ACP-204 secp256r1 precompile	Adds an R1 signature-verification precompile on EVM chains	EVM side. PulseVM already verifies R1 and WebAuthn keys natively
ACP-226 dynamic minimum block times	Makes the minimum block time on EVM chains configurable	EVM side

The 1.14.2 release also raises the rpcchainvm plugin protocol to 45. It adds benchlist, Simplex (experimental) and disk-space settings, deprecates consensusParameters in subnet configs in favour of snowParameters, and removes proposerMinBlockDelay from subnet configs. If your subnet config sets any of these, review it before you restart. Full notes are in the metalgo release.

The PulseVM side

metalgo only loads a VM plugin that speaks its rpcchainvm protocol version:

metalgo	rpcchainvm protocol
1.13.5	43
1.14.0, 1.14.1	44
1.14.2	45

The latest PulseVM release (v0.7.1) and current PulseVM main speak protocol 43. As of 2026-09-24, v45 support is in development and not yet in a release. A PulseVM build with v45 support is required to run a PulseVM chain on metalgo 1.14.2. Watch Updates.

For operators of PulseVM validators on Tahoe, this means:

• Upgrade metalgo and the PulseVM plugin together, in the same maintenance window, once the v45 build is available.
• Don't put the current plugin under metalgo 1.14.2. metalgo will refuse to start the chain because of the protocol mismatch.
• Nodes that only serve the primary network (no PulseVM chain) can upgrade now.

Steps

Upgrade one node at a time. Wait for each node to be healthy before you move to the next, so the validator set never loses more than one member at once.

1. Back up the staker keys. Always do this first, before you touch any binary.

sudo tar -czf ~/staking-backup-$(date +%F).tgz -C ~/.metalgo staking
tar -tzf ~/staking-backup-$(date +%F).tgz   # should list staker.crt, staker.key, signer.key

Copy the archive off the machine. If your staking-* flags point elsewhere, back up that directory instead.

2. Record the current state, so you can compare after the upgrade:

curl -s -X POST -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"info.getNodeVersion"}' \
  http://127.0.0.1:9650/ext/info

3. Download and verify the new binary:

VER=v1.14.2-tahoe
ARCH=amd64   # or arm64
curl -fsSLO https://github.com/MetalBlockchain/metalgo/releases/download/$VER/metalgo-linux-$ARCH-$VER.tar.gz
sha256sum metalgo-linux-$ARCH-$VER.tar.gz
tar -xzf metalgo-linux-$ARCH-$VER.tar.gz

The amd64 tarball as published on 2026-09-22 has SHA-256 7732b814168d6c34bca209a4429ae73b3fb22629dd7e2f286e3d85ca35c90b2a. The tarball contains a single metalgo binary.

4. Stop, replace, start. Keep the old binary for rollback. The paths below match the layout on Run a validator. Adjust them to your service.

sudo systemctl stop metalgo
sudo cp /opt/metalgo/metalgo /opt/metalgo/metalgo-1.13.5
sudo install -m 0755 metalgo-$VER/metalgo /opt/metalgo/metalgo
# PulseVM validators: install the v45 plugin under the VM ID in the same window
sudo systemctl start metalgo

5. Verify.

# version: expect "metalgo/1.14.2..." and "rpcProtocolVersion": "45"
curl -s -X POST -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"info.getNodeVersion"}' \
  http://127.0.0.1:9650/ext/info

# P-Chain bootstrapped: expect "isBootstrapped": true
curl -s -X POST -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"info.isBootstrapped","params":{"chain":"P"}}' \
  http://127.0.0.1:9650/ext/info

# overall health: expect "healthy": true
curl -s http://127.0.0.1:9650/ext/health

# PulseVM chain (validators): same call, your blockchain ID
curl -s -X POST -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"info.isBootstrapped","params":{"chain":"<blockchain-id>"}}' \
  http://127.0.0.1:9650/ext/info

On a PulseVM validator, also check that pulsevm.getInfo returns and that head and LIB match the other validators. See Monitor.

Rollback

Rolling back to 1.13.5 does not restore service on Tahoe. Granite is already active, and a 1.13.5 node can't follow the post-Granite P-Chain. Only roll back to recover from a broken install on a node that can afford to be out of sync while you investigate:

sudo systemctl stop metalgo
sudo install -m 0755 /opt/metalgo/metalgo-1.13.5 /opt/metalgo/metalgo
sudo systemctl start metalgo

The better fix is almost always forward: reinstall the 1.14.2 binary, check the config against the release notes (subnet consensusParameters, removed flags), and check the plugin's protocol version. Your staker keys don't change during the upgrade, so the node keeps its NodeID either way.

Next step

See Run a validator for monitoring and backup routines, and watch Updates for the PulseVM build with v45 support.