bitcoin/doc/release-notes.md

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. "22.0 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.

version Release Notes Draft

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/

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 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.

Compatibility

Bitcoin Core is supported and extensively tested on operating systems using the Linux kernel, macOS 10.15+, 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.

Notable changes

P2P and network changes

• A bitcoind node will no longer rumour addresses to inbound peers by default. They will become eligible for address gossip after sending an ADDR, ADDRV2, or GETADDR message. (#21528)

Fee estimation changes

• Fee estimation now takes the feerate of replacement (RBF) transactions into account. (#22539)

Rescan startup parameter removed

The -rescan startup parameter has been removed. Wallets which require rescanning due to corruption will still be rescanned on startup. Otherwise, please use the rescanblockchain RPC to trigger a rescan. (#23123)

Updated RPCs

• upgradewallet will now automatically flush the keypool if upgrading from a non-HD wallet to an HD wallet, to immediately start using the newly-generated HD keys. (#23093)

• a new RPC newkeypool has been added, which will flush (entirely clear and refill) the keypool. (#23093)

• The validateaddress RPC now returns an error_locations array for invalid addresses, with the indices of invalid character locations in the address (if known). For example, this will attempt to locate up to two Bech32 errors, and return their locations if successful. Success and correctness are only guaranteed if fewer than two substitution errors have been made. The error message returned in the error field now also returns more specific errors when decoding fails. (#16807)

• The -deprecatedrpc=addresses configuration option has been removed. RPCs gettxout, getrawtransaction, decoderawtransaction, decodescript, gettransaction verbose=true and REST endpoints /rest/tx, /rest/getutxos, /rest/block no longer return the addresses and reqSigs fields, which were previously deprecated in 22.0. (#22650)

• The getblock RPC command now supports verbose level 3 containing transaction inputs prevout information. The existing /rest/block/ REST endpoint is modified to contain this information too. Every vin field will contain an additional prevout subfield describing the spent output. prevout contains the following keys:

  • generated - true if the spent coins was a coinbase.
  • height
  • value
  • scriptPubKey

• listunspent now includes ancestorcount, ancestorsize, and ancestorfees for each transaction output that is still in the mempool. (#12677)

• lockunspent now optionally takes a third parameter, persistent, which causes the lock to be written persistently to the wallet database. This allows UTXOs to remain locked even after node restarts or crashes. (#23065)

New RPCs

Build System

Files

• On startup, the list of banned hosts and networks (via setban RPC) in banlist.dat is ignored and only banlist.json is considered. Bitcoin Core version 22.x is the only version that can read banlist.dat and also write it to banlist.json. If banlist.json already exists, version 22.x will not try to translate the banlist.dat into json. After an upgrade, listbanned can be used to double check the parsed entries. (#22570)

New settings

Updated settings

• In previous releases, the meaning of the command line option -persistmempool (without a value provided) incorrectly disabled mempool persistence. -persistmempool is now treated like other boolean options to mean -persistmempool=1. Passing -persistmempool=0, -persistmempool=1 and -nopersistmempool is unaffected. (#23061)

• -maxuploadtarget now allows human readable byte units [k|K|m|M|g|G|t|T]. E.g. -maxuploadtarget=500g. No whitespace, +- or fractions allowed. Default is M if no suffix provided. (#23249)

Tools and Utilities

• Update -getinfo to return data in a user-friendly format that also reduces vertical space. (#21832)

• CLI -addrinfo now returns a single field for the number of onion addresses known to the node instead of separate torv2 and torv3 fields, as support for Tor V2 addresses was removed from Bitcoin Core in 22.0. (#22544)

Wallet

GUI changes

• UTXOs which are locked via the GUI are now stored persistently in the wallet database, so are not lost on node shutdown or crash. (#23065)

Low-level changes

RPC

• getblockchaininfo now returns a new time field, that provides the chain tip time. (#22407)

Tests

• For the regtest network the activation heights of several softforks were set to block height 1. They can be changed by the runtime setting -testactivationheight=name@height. (#22818)

Credits

Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:

As well as to everyone that helped with translations on Transifex.