bitcoin/doc/release-notes/release-notes-0.16.3.md

Bitcoin Core version 0.16.3 is now available from:

https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-0.16.3/

This is a new minor version release, with various bugfixes.

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/

How to Upgrade

If you are running an older version, shut it down. Wait until it has completely shut down (which might take a few minutes for older versions), then run the installer (on Windows) or just copy over /Applications/Bitcoin-Qt (on Mac) or bitcoind/bitcoin-qt (on Linux).

The first time you run version 0.15.0 or newer, your chainstate database will be converted to a new format, which will take anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour, depending on the speed of your machine.

Note that the block database format also changed in version 0.8.0 and there is no automatic upgrade code from before version 0.8 to version 0.15.0 or higher. Upgrading directly from 0.7.x and earlier without re-downloading the blockchain is not supported. However, as usual, old wallet versions are still supported.

Downgrading warning

Wallets created in 0.16 and later are not compatible with versions prior to 0.16 and will not work if you try to use newly created wallets in older versions. Existing wallets that were created with older versions are not affected by this.

Compatibility

Bitcoin Core is extensively tested on multiple operating systems using the Linux kernel, macOS 10.8+, and Windows Vista and later. Windows XP is not supported.

Bitcoin Core should also work on most other Unix-like systems but is not frequently tested on them.

Notable changes

Denial-of-Service vulnerability

A denial-of-service vulnerability (CVE-2018-17144) exploitable by miners has been discovered in Bitcoin Core versions 0.14.0 up to 0.16.2. It is recommended to upgrade any of the vulnerable versions to 0.16.3 as soon as possible.

0.16.3 change log

Consensus

• #14249 696b936 Fix crash bug with duplicate inputs within a transaction (TheBlueMatt, sdaftuar)

RPC and other APIs

• #13547 212ef1f Make signrawtransaction* give an error when amount is needed but missing (ajtowns)

Miscellaneous

• #13655 1cdbea7 bitcoinconsensus: invalid flags error should be set to bitcoinconsensus_err (afk11)

Documentation

• #13844 11b9dbb correct the help output for -prune (hebasto)

Credits

Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:

• Anthony Towns
• Hennadii Stepanov
• Matt Corallo
• Suhas Daftuar
• Thomas Kerin
• Wladimir J. van der Laan

And to those that reported security issues:

• (anonymous reporter)