Chia 2.7.0: security release and soft fork after an "AI siege"
Chia Network released version 2.7.0 of the Chia reference client on 26 March 2026. The blog post that came with it, "Chia 2.7.0: Combatting the AI Siege", explains why this update is urgent.
What happened
For about three months the Chia testnet was attacked around the clock. According to Chia, security researchers and attackers now use AI tools to search code for weaknesses and to stress-test the network. Bug bounty reports piled up: more than a thousand in one six-week period. Chia's security team then trained its own AI tools and pointed them at Chia's own code. That turned up issues that normal audits and manual reviews had missed.
What 2.7.0 does
- Fixes these security issues and hardens how nodes handle connections, messages and the mempool, including on slower machines.
- Adds a Remote Wallet feature and new RPC calls.
- Is a soft fork that activates at block 8,655,000, around 29–30 April 2026. That is the same block as the soft fork in version 2.6.0, released on 11 February 2026. Chia says 2.7.0 effectively supersedes 2.6.0.
Chia said it will publish detailed post-mortems for the patched issues once more than half of the network has upgraded.
What it means for XCHPool farmers
Chia asked all farmers and node operators to upgrade right away. Update your full node and farmer (and ideally your harvesters too), then check that your farmer still shows a connection to the pool at https://pool.xchpool.org. Downloads are on chia.net/downloads.
Sources: Chia Network: Chia 2.7.0: Combatting the AI Siege, GitHub: Chia 2.7.0 release notes, GitHub: Chia 2.6.0 release notes