… and we keep on rolling 
Networking bugs fixed, that were causing some fractions on the block producing time
Kusama runtime fix merged and included for the next fellowship release
Next up
Activate Async Backing on Kusama
After the upcoming Fellowship runtime with a referendum we will activate async backing on Kusama, it will be safe for governance to enable 6s block times for parachains (if that’s what they want).
Enable Async Backing on Polkadot
We were able to identify the one remaining issue with async backing in legacy mode on Kusama. With this, we are ready to enable async backing on Polkadot as well. Meaning, after the upcoming Fellowship runtime release is enacted, 6s block times are only a governance motion away. That motion should be proposed after we saw it working flawlessly on Kusama.
VALIDATORS PLEASE UPGRADE
In order to make the launch of async backing successful on Polkadot, we need your coopearation: Async backing is a new feature which is only supported by recent node versions. We recommend to run the latest version (1.8 at the time of writing). Running older versions, poses the risk of receiving less era points.
Please, feel free to reach out if you have any questions! The next update will be posted in 4 weeks again on this thread 