v0.8.0: Blockchain Good, Orange Coin Bad

We're pleased to announce 0.8.0, named by m-schmoock

Time to move to the real world, by making Bitcoin mainnet the default network.

Highlights for Users

⚠️ The default network and the default location of the lightning home directory changed. Please make sure that the configuration, key file and database are moved into the network-specific subdirectory. ⚠️

• We now support receiving multi-part payments, a first step towards a more unified user experience, allowing users to bundle their channel capacities, and generally care less about whom to peer with. Support for sending is currently manual only: pay won't do it yet.
• Bitcoin mainnet is now the default network, no more --network=bitcoin needed for all you reckless users 😉
• Nodes will now use a network-dependent subdirectory, so you can run nodes for multiple networks without having to specify different --lightning-dirs.
  • Existing nodes should automatically move existing databases and hsm_secret files into the correct subdirectory. If the node does not appear to load correctly please ensure that the move was performed
    correctly.
• Config files can now be structured into multiple files using the include statement. This allows reusing common configuration options across multiple nodes.
• The rpc_command hook allows intercepting JSON-RPC requests, and arbitrarily modify them. For example this can be used to authenticate an incoming RPC request before executing it.

Highlights for the Network

• If you are a developer you might want to check out the new createonion and sendonion RPC calls which will allow you to build custom protocol extensions on top of c-lightning
• The newer TLV style payloads in the routing onions are now stable and can be used both for classical payments as well as in custom onions created by createonion.
• Invoices now add an s field for a "payment secret" which can avoid some payment probing attacks, and the pay command now uses that field if present.
• We now send what networks we support on connection: this detects accidentally connecting mainnet and testnet node (harmless, but useless).

More details can be found in https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/blob/v0.8.0/CHANGELOG.md

Thanks to everyone for their contributions and bug reports; please keep them coming!

Since 0.7.3 we've had 305 commits from 16 different authors, with 6 first-time contributors!

• Michael Schmoock @m-schmoock
• Gorazd Kovacic @gorazdko
• Richard Myers @RichardMyers
• Vasil Dimov @vasild
• Sebastian Geisler @sgeisler
• Jarret Dyrbye @jarret

Cheers,
Lisa, Rusty, Christian, and ZmnSCPxj.