diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 0b7f385..53148ea 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,5 +1,23 @@
 > This project uses [Break Versioning](https://github.com/ptaoussanis/encore/blob/master/BREAK-VERSIONING.md) as of **Aug 16, 2014**.
 
+## v2.11.0-alpha1 / 2015 Dec 1
+
+> This is a major performance release that **drops default support for thawing Nippy v1 archives** but is otherwise non-breaking
+
+* **BREAKING**: `thaw` now has `:v1-compatibility?` opt set to false by default (was true before) [1]
+* **Performance**: optimize serialized size of small maps, sets, vectors, bytes
+* **Performance**: optimized (no copy) `freeze` when using no compression or encryption
+* **Implementation**: swap most macros for fns (make low-level utils easier to use)
+
+```clojure
+[com.taoensso/nippy "2.11.0-alpha1"]
+```
+
+#### Notes
+
+**[1]** Use `(thaw <frozen-byte-array> {:v1-compatibility? true})` to support thawing of data frozen with Nippy v1 (before ~June 2013)
+
+
 ## v2.10.0 / 2015 Sep 30
 
 > This is a major feature/performance release that **drops support for Clojure 1.4** but is otherwise non-breaking
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 2223c63..a12b3ce 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,7 +1,8 @@
 **[API docs][]** | **[CHANGELOG][]** | [other Clojure libs][] | [Twitter][] | [contact/contrib](#contact--contributing) | current [Break Version][]:
 
 ```clojure
-[com.taoensso/nippy "2.10.0"] ; Stable, see CHANGELOG for details
+[com.taoensso/nippy "2.10.0"]        ; Stable
+[com.taoensso/nippy "2.11.0-alpha1"] ; Dev, see CHANGELOG for details
 ```
 
 # Nippy, a Clojure serialization library
diff --git a/project.clj b/project.clj
index dc2bf72..ec8389a 100644
--- a/project.clj
+++ b/project.clj
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-(defproject com.taoensso/nippy "2.11.0-SNAPSHOT"
+(defproject com.taoensso/nippy "2.11.0-alpha1"
   :author "Peter Taoussanis <https://www.taoensso.com>"
   :description "Clojure serialization library"
   :url "https://github.com/ptaoussanis/nippy"