After branching off for a major version release of Bitcoin Core, use this template to create the initial release notes draft.
The release notes draft is a temporary file that can be added to by anyone. See /doc/developer-notes.md#release-notes for the process.
Create the draft, named "version Release Notes Draft" (e.g. "0.20.0 Release Notes Draft"), as a collaborative wiki in:
https://github.com/bitcoin-core/bitcoin-devwiki/wiki/
Before the final release, move the notes back to this git repository.
Bitcoin Core version version is now available from:
https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-*version*/
This release includes new features, various bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as updated translations.
Please report bugs using the issue tracker at GitHub:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues
To receive security and update notifications, please subscribe to:
https://bitcoincore.org/en/list/announcements/join/
If you are running an older version, shut it down. Wait until it has completely
shut down (which might take a few minutes in some cases), then run the
installer (on Windows) or just copy over /Applications/Bitcoin-Qt
(on Mac)
or bitcoind
/bitcoin-qt
(on Linux).
Upgrading directly from a version of Bitcoin Core that has reached its EOL is possible, but it might take some time if the data directory needs to be migrated. Old wallet versions of Bitcoin Core are generally supported.
Bitcoin Core is supported and extensively tested on operating systems using the Linux kernel, macOS 10.14+, and Windows 7 and newer. Bitcoin Core should also work on most other Unix-like systems but is not as frequently tested on them. It is not recommended to use Bitcoin Core on unsupported systems.
From Bitcoin Core 22.0 onwards, macOS versions earlier than 10.14 are no longer supported.
- Added NAT-PMP port mapping support via
libnatpmp
. (#18077)
-
Due to BIP 350 being implemented, behavior for all RPCs that accept addresses is changed when a native witness version 1 (or higher) is passed. These now require a Bech32m encoding instead of a Bech32 one, and Bech32m encoding will be used for such addresses in RPC output as well. No version 1 addresses should be created for mainnet until consensus rules are adopted that give them meaning (e.g. through BIP 341). Once that happens, Bech32m is expected to be used for them, so this shouldn't affect any production systems, but may be observed on other networks where such addresses already have meaning (like signet). (#20861)
-
The
getpeerinfo
RPC returns two new boolean fields,bip152_hb_to
andbip152_hb_from
, that respectively indicate whether we selected a peer to be in compact blocks high-bandwidth mode or whether a peer selected us as a compact blocks high-bandwidth peer. High-bandwidth peers send new block announcements via acmpctblock
message rather than the usual inv/headers announcements. See BIP 152 for more details. (#19776) -
getpeerinfo
no longer returns the following fields:addnode
,banscore
, andwhitelisted
, which were previously deprecated in 0.21. Instead ofaddnode
, theconnection_type
field returns manual. Instead ofwhitelisted
, thepermissions
field indicates if the peer has special privileges. Thebanscore
field has simply been removed. (#20755) -
The following RPCs:
gettxout
,getrawtransaction
,decoderawtransaction
,decodescript
,gettransaction
, and REST endpoints:/rest/tx
,/rest/getutxos
,/rest/block
deprecated the following fields (which are no longer returned in the responses by default):addresses
,reqSigs
. The-deprecatedrpc=addresses
flag must be passed for these fields to be included in the RPC response. This flag/option will be available only for this major release, after which the deprecation will be removed entirely. Note that these fields are attributes of thescriptPubKey
object returned in the RPC response. However, in the response ofdecodescript
these fields are top-level attributes, and included again as attributes of thescriptPubKey
object. (#20286) -
When creating a hex-encoded bitcoin transaction using the
bitcoin-tx
utility with the-json
option set, the following fields:addresses
,reqSigs
are no longer returned in the tx output of the response. (#20286) -
The
listbanned
RPC now returns two new numeric fields:ban_duration
andtime_remaining
. Respectively, these new fields indicate the duration of a ban and the time remaining until a ban expires, both in seconds. Additionally, theban_created
field is repositioned to come beforebanned_until
. (#21602) -
The
getnodeaddresses
RPC now returns a "network" field indicating the network type (ipv4, ipv6, onion, or i2p) for each address. (#21594) -
getnodeaddresses
now also accepts a "network" argument (ipv4, ipv6, onion, or i2p) to return only addresses of the specified network. (#21843)
Changes to Wallet or GUI related RPCs can be found in the GUI or Wallet section below.
- The
-natpmp
option has been added to use NAT-PMP to map the listening port. If both UPnP and NAT-PMP are enabled, a successful allocation from UPnP prevails over one from NAT-PMP. (#18077)
Changes to Wallet or GUI related settings can be found in the GUI or Wallet section below.
- Passing an invalid
-rpcauth
argument now cause bitcoind to fail to start. (#20461)
- A new CLI
-addrinfo
command returns the number of addresses known to the node per network type (including Tor v2 versus v3) and total. This can be useful to see if the node knows enough addresses in a network to use options like-onlynet=<network>
or to upgrade to current and future Tor releases that support Tor v3 addresses only. (#21595)
-
A new
listdescriptors
RPC is available to inspect the contents of descriptor-enabled wallets. The RPC returns public versions of all imported descriptors, including their timestamp and flags. For ranged descriptors, it also returns the range boundaries and the next index to generate addresses from. (#20226) -
The
bumpfee
RPC is not available with wallets that have private keys disabled.psbtbumpfee
can be used instead. (#20891) -
The
fundrawtransaction
,send
andwalletcreatefundedpsbt
RPCs now support aninclude_unsafe
option that whentrue
allows using unsafe inputs to fund the transaction. Note that the resulting transaction may become invalid if one of the unsafe inputs disappears. If that happens, the transaction must be funded with different inputs and republished. (#21359)
-
The RPC server can process a limited number of simultaneous RPC requests. Previously, if this limit was exceeded, the RPC server would respond with status code 500 (
HTTP_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR
). Now it returns status code 503 (HTTP_SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE
). (#18335) -
Error codes have been updated to be more accurate for the following error cases (#18466):
signmessage
now returns RPC_INVALID_ADDRESS_OR_KEY (-5) if the passed address is invalid. Previously returned RPC_TYPE_ERROR (-3).verifymessage
now returns RPC_INVALID_ADDRESS_OR_KEY (-5) if the passed address is invalid. Previously returned RPC_TYPE_ERROR (-3).verifymessage
now returns RPC_TYPE_ERROR (-3) if the passed signature is malformed. Previously returned RPC_INVALID_ADDRESS_OR_KEY (-5).
Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:
As well as to everyone that helped with translations on Transifex.