Release 0.44

[lidel]

Note

Part of ongoing maintenance of key libraries and services the Shipyard team does for IPFS Foundation:

• Ongoing maintenance of key libraries and services — 2026-Q2 ipshipyard/roadmaps#50

Meta

• Release owner: @lidel
• Release reviewer/backup: @gammazero
• Expected RC1 date: TBD
• 🚢 Expected final release date: TBD
• Release PR: TBD
• Accompanying PR for improving the release process: TBD
• Internal Staging tests by Shipyard: TBD
• Changelog: https://github.com/ipfs/kubo/blob/master/docs/changelogs/v0.44.md

Items In Scope

Required

• TBD

TBD depends on plan until September

• feat: default new repos to CIDv1 #8185 - tbd if we want to risk it, maybe better to keep it as draft for future release

Nice To Have (Optional)

• libp2p with fixed /webrtc-direct (context: WebRTC-Direct: Chrome may be removing ICE credential munging libp2p/specs#672 (comment))
• TBD