Web3j

Web3j 5.0.2: A Community Release That Moves Us Forward

George Tebrean, Webj3 maintainer and Blockchain Developer at Web3 Lab |
Web3j 5.0.2: A Community Release That Moves Us Forward

The release of Web3j v5.0.2 marks another important step in the evolution of the Web3j ecosystem. This release is not just about version numbers or dependency bumps; it reflects the steady, collective effort of contributors, mentees, maintainers, and long-time community members who continue to shape the project.

Over the past cycle, we’ve seen meaningful improvements across the core library and its surrounding tooling from transaction encoding fixes to Gradle 9 compatibility and new protocol support. Most importantly, we’ve welcomed new contributors who are now part of the Web3j journey.

Let’s walk through what’s new.

Web3j v5.0.2

This release includes six commits to main since the previous release and a series of improvements across reliability, encoding correctness, and ecosystem alignment.

Highlights

  • Unified JDK distribution in the release workflow - @MidSage0614
  • *Updated to Besu 25.10.0 and Besu Native 1.4.0 - @fab-10
  • Gradle 9 upgrade - @gtebrean
  • Fixed broken Codecov badge - @Olexandr88

Transaction & Encoding Improvements

Several contributors focused on improving transaction correctness and encoding stability:

  • Fixed missing weiValue when estimating gas for payable functions - @liulinhui
  • Fixed serialization when using access lists - @zouxyan
  • Fixed NPE when encoding transactions with null data - @furkilic
  • Fixed encoding for non-ASCII characters - @Kun3375
  • Added EIP-7702 authorization list support to Transaction - @Filter94

These changes strengthen Web3j’s transaction layer, ensuring broader compatibility and safer execution flows.

Core Contributors & First-Time Mentees

This release saw a strong influx of first-time contributors: @fab-10, @Olexandr88, @liulinhui, @zouxyan, @VolodymyrBg, @furkilic, @Kun3375, @Filter94

Your contributions demonstrate how focused fixes and scoped features can meaningfully improve a mature library.

web3j-unit v5.0.2

This release keeps web3j-unit aligned with the core library.

Changes

  • Fix Besu test container, @gtebrean
  • Gradle 9 upgrade, @gtebrean

Stability in testing infrastructure is critical, and keeping test containers working smoothly ensures contributors can develop with confidence.

web3j-evm v5.0.2

Updates

  • Gradle 9 upgrade, @gtebrean

The focus here continues to be ecosystem alignment and build modernization.

web3j-maven-plugin v5.0.2

This plugin received several important fixes:

  • Fixed UnknownHostException: github.com when offline, @bodyhedia44
  • Fixed class generation with Forge-generated ABI files, @nkramer44
  • Fixed CVE-2025-48924, @gtebrean

New Contributors

  • @bodyhedia44
  • @nkramer44

These updates improve developer tooling, lower friction and make onboarding smoother for everyone building with Web3j.

web3j-gradle-plugin v5.0.2

Updates

  • Markdown file updates, @gtebrean
  • Gradle 9 upgrade, @gtebrean

These changes keep the Gradle plugin aligned, ensuring modern build compatibility across projects.

web3j-solidity-gradle-plugin v0.6.1

What’s New

  • Updated plugin to follow current Gradle best practices
    (Configuration Cache & Gradle 9 compatibility), @jjohannes
  • Fixed linking to processResources task of current source set, @jjohannes

This modernization ensures compatibility with newer Gradle versions and improves performance via Configuration Cache support.

web3j-sok v0.6.0

Changes

  • Added release information for version 0.8.30, @zouxyan
  • Updated Maven release process, @gtebrean
  • Build fixes, @gtebrean

New Contributor

  • @zouxyan

web3j-cli v1.8.0

Updates

  • Added --abiFuncs to generate Solidity in CLI tool, @tonykwok1992
  • Gradle 9 upgrade, @gtebrean

New Contributor

  • @tonykwok1992

A Community Release

Web3j 5.0.2 reflects something bigger than feature additions:

  • Better transaction encoding reliability
  • Support for emerging standards like EIP-7702
  • Modernized build infrastructure (Gradle 9)
  • Improved developer tooling
  • Security maintenance
  • New contributors stepping in

To all mentees and first-time contributors: thank you. Open source thrives because people choose to show up, to debug, to fix edge cases, to update documentation, to modernize workflows.

This release is yours as much as it is anyone’s.

We continue building Web3j together, one commit at a time.
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