Author: Wladimir J. van der Laan 2021-01-14 13:58:35
Published on: 2021-01-14T13:58:35+00:00
Bitcoin Core has released an update, version 0.21.0, which includes numerous improvements and new features to the network and wallet. Compatibility is supported for Linux kernel operating systems, macOS 10.12+, and Windows 7 and newer. Notable changes to P2P and network include reduced transaction sizes and support for Tor v3 hidden services using BIP155. Additionally, this release implements Taproot consensus rules without activation on mainnet.Changes to the network include better peer-to-peer process message to PeerLogicValidation, changing CNetAddr::ip to have a flexible size, removing old checks for 3-byte shifted IP addresses from pre-0.2.9 nodes, adding a Peer struct for per-peer data in net processing, cleaning up connection types follow-ups, protecting localhost and block-relay-only peers from eviction, increasing the IP address relay branching factor, extending logging, and hardcoding seeds update for 0.21.The update also includes changes to the wallet, such as Native Descriptor Wallets using DescriptorScriptPubKeyMan, introducing WalletDatabase abstract class, and fixing for confirmed column in CSV export for payment to self transactions. The `sendtoaddress` and `sendmany` RPCs now accept an optional `verbose=True` argument to return the fee reason about sent transactions. The wallet can create a transaction without change even when the keypool is empty.A new type of wallet - Descriptor Wallets that store scriptPubKey information using output descriptors - has also been introduced. Descriptor Wallets change the way scripts and keys are imported and exported, making it easier to reason about which scripts the wallet will actually be watching for in outputs. However, for the majority of users, this change is largely transparent and will not have any noticeable effect. Newly created Legacy Wallets will behave as they did in previous versions of Bitcoin Core. Descriptor wallets are not the default type of wallet and can be created through the GUI or the `createwallet` RPC.The latest release includes additional fields in the `getnetworkinfo` RPC, new RPCs such as `getindexinfo`, and a new `bitcoin-cli -netinfo` command that provides a network peer connections dashboard. The Bitcoin Core version 0.20.0 update includes numerous fixes and improvements for RPC and other APIs, GUI, documentation, and more. Improvements were made to the util, ci, script, and contrib sections, including the addition of bitcoin-cli -generate command. Additionally, the update includes an improved display of multiwallet balances in -getinfo and the introduction of `fee_rate` sat/vB param/option, allowing zero-fee fundrawtransaction/walletcreatefundedpsbt and other fixes.The recent update by the Bitcoin Core team contains a series of improvements and documentation updates, including better documentation for the "verifychain" RPC argument and updates to macOS cross-compilation dependencies. Notable contributions came from developers, translators, and project managers. There are also several new warnings and explanations included in this release, such as a warning about incoming connections when not using default ports and explanations of GNU ld's dislike of ld64's options. Bugs and missing functionality can be reported to the issue tracker.
Updated on: 2023-05-21T00:43:36.800229+00:00