Helicon Goes Live in Core With Auto-Renew Staking for Validators

coreapp announced on Sept. 22, 2026 that Helicon is live, with the network upgrades now accessible to users directly inside Core. The wallet's post states that validators can configure auto-renewed staking during setup and manage those settings after a node has started.

Core is Ava Labs' Avalanche-native wallet, distributed as a browser extension and as mobile apps for Android and iOS. It supports native AVAX staking, swaps, sending and receiving, portfolio and NFT tracking across holdings, and connections to decentralized applications on Avalanche's C-Chain and on independent Layer 1s.

What validators can configure

The auto-renewal controls let operators set staking preferences at the point of node configuration rather than only after launch, with the ability to revise them later. An image shared alongside the announcement depicts a staking configuration screen showing a five-day cycle ending Sept. 28, 2026 and compound rewards set at 90 percent.

The confirmation follows earlier reporting that the Helicon upgrade carried a Sept. 22, 2026 deadline, and it lands during a busy stretch for the Avalanche ecosystem, which marked its sixth anniversary the same day.

What to watch

With the upgrade live and staking controls exposed in Core, attention turns to how many validators adopt auto-renewed staking and whether the network upgrades reach the wider set of Avalanche applications. coreapp has framed Core as the default entry point for users interacting with the chain, and validator tooling is now part of that surface.