Core 5.0 was ready. It could never ship.
By late 2025, Core 5.0 — a ground-up consensus rewrite (BFT + BLS, decoupled RPC, ~20× throughput) — had reached roughly 90% testnet completion. The barrier to releasing it was never technical. This page sets out, with the underlying document, why the upgrade was blocked.
How we got here
A move to an independent mainnet was pursued under heavy external pressure. As a condition of support, a treasury wallet that was meant to belong to the project was, in the Foundation's account, required to be placed under Binance's control — without it, the mainnet transition would not be supported.
A swap arrangement set a measured, ethical release schedule: 31,200,000 SXP to be released at 600,000 SXP per month. A monthly timelock protected the market and the community from a sudden dump. By the later agreement's effective date, 13,200,000 SXP had been released and 18,000,000 remained. See the agreement, §4 ↗
Core 5.0 entered alpha in June 2024 (~20× faster than Core 4.3.1) and reached ~90% testnet completion by November 2025 — BFT consensus, BLS signatures, deterministic block production, decoupled RPC nodes. Nov 2025 update ↗
To proceed, the Foundation was presented with a new Token Swap Agreement. It would have required cancelling the agreed monthly timelock and transferring all remaining 18,000,000 SXP at once, accepting personal liability, and obtaining Binance's consent for the upgrade — with no guarantee that Core 5.0 would be listed on Binance. Read the full agreement ↗
The blockers
Each blocker below links to the clause in the published Token Swap Agreement that establishes it. Together they made an independent Core 5.0 release impossible.
The Foundation had to obtain Binance's prior written consent before any token swap or any mainnet swap or integration. Core 5.0 is exactly that kind of change — so it could not be deployed without consent.
The current mainnet had to be kept live and could not be replaced or made ineffective without consent — which is what migrating to a new chain would do.
The wallet and the SXP within it are stated to belong to Binance — a treasury that, in the Foundation's account, was meant to be the project's, and whose handover was a condition of the original mainnet support.
In place of the agreed 600,000 SXP/month schedule, the new terms required sending the entire remaining 18,000,000 SXP at once (by 18 Feb 2026). Abandoning the timelock that protected the community was, in the Foundation's view, ethically wrong.
Solar and an individual would be jointly and severally liable, with indemnification flowing to Binance — while Binance's own total liability was capped at US$10,000 and it could terminate at any time without cause.
In exchange for all of the above, there was no commitment that Core 5.0 — or its token — would be listed or supported on Binance. All of the obligation sat on one side; none of the assurance did.
Why the Foundation did not sign
Signing would have meant breaking a community-protecting timelock, transferring the remaining supply in a single block, and accepting open-ended personal and corporate liability — in return for a one-sided contract with a US$10,000 liability cap on the other side, a unilateral right to terminate, and no guarantee of listing or support. As the resignation statement put it, the request “looked polite on the surface but was structured in a way no reasonable person could sign.”
So Core 5.0 — the work that would have given Solar genuine independence and removed its reliance on any single gatekeeper — was shelved, and the project's lead stepped down rather than sign. The network remains on Core 4.3.1 in maintenance-only mode.