On December 20th, according to the official blog, Stellar announced plans to introduce smart contract functionality in the upgrade and will be phased in during the first half of 2024.

Stellar network validators will vote on the upgrade on January 30th: "To ensure that the launch provides developers with a high-quality experience, Stellar will evaluate experimental contract deployment and communicate with developers when the smart contract platform (called Soroban) reaches the user-available transaction processing level per second."