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@dajohi dajohi released this 14 Dec 22:00
· 43 commits to master since this release
v1.4.0-rc1
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Learn about vigilant mode.

2018-12-13

Install

To install the command line tools, please see dcrinstaller.

To install decrediton download, uncompress, and run decrediton Linux or decrediton macOS or decrediton Windows.

See manifest-v1.4.0-rc1.txt, and the package specific manifest files for sha256 sums and the associated .asc files to confirm those shas.

See README.md for more info on verifying the files.

Contents

dcrd v1.4.0-rc1

This release of dcrd contains smart fee estimation, performance enhancements for block relay and processing, a major internal restructuring of how unspent transaction outputs are handled, support for whitelisting inbound peers to ensure service for your own SPV (Simplified Payment Verification) wallets, various updates to the RPC server such as a new method to query the state of the chain and more easily supporting external RPC connections over TLS, infrastructure improvements, and other quality assurance changes.

It is highly recommended that everyone upgrade to this latest release as it contains many important scalability improvements and smart fee estimation.

Downgrade Warning

The database format in v1.4.0 is not compatible with previous versions of the software. This only affects downgrades as users upgrading from previous versions will see a lengthy one time database migration.

Once this migration has been completed, it will no longer be possible to downgrade to a previous version of the software without having to delete the database and redownload the chain.

Notable Changes

Smart Fee Estimation (estimatesmartfee)

A new RPC named estimatesmartfee is now available which returns a suitable fee rate for transactions to use in order to have a high probability of them being mined within a specified number of confirmations. The estimation is based on actual network usage and thus varies according to supply and demand.

This is important in the context of the Lightning Network (LN) and, more generally, it provides services and users with a mechanism to choose how to handle network congestion. For example, payments that are high priority might be willing to pay a higher fee to help ensure the transaction is mined more quickly, while lower priority payments might be willing to wait longer in exchange for paying a lower fee. This estimation capability provides a way to obtain a fee that will achieve the desired result with a high probability.

Support for Whitelisting Inbound Peers

When peers are whitelisted via the --whitelist option, they will now be allowed to connect even when they would otherwise exceed the maximum number of peers. This is highly useful in cases where users have configured their wallet to use SPV mode and only connect to dcrd instances that they control for increased privacy and guaranteed service.

Several Speed Optimizations

Similar to previous releases, this release also contains several enhancements to improve speed for the initial sync process, validation, and network operations.

In order to achieve these speedups, there is a lengthy one time database migration, as previously mentioned, that typically takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to complete depending on hardware.

Faster Tip Block Relay

Blocks that extend the current best chain are now relayed to the network immediately after they pass the initial sanity and contextual checks, most notably valid proof of work. This allows blocks to propagate more quickly throughout the network, which in turn improves vote times.

UTXO Set Restructuring

The way the unspent transaction outputs are handled internally has been overhauled to significantly decrease the time it takes to validate block and transactions. While this has many benefits, probably the most important one for most stakeholders is that votes can be cast more quickly which helps reduce the number of missed votes.

RPC Server Changes

New Chain State Query RPC (getblockchaininfo)

A new RPC named getblockchaininfo is now available which can be used to query the state of the chain including details such as its overall verification progress during initial sync, the maximum supported block size, and that status of consensus changes (deployments) which require stakeholder votes. See the JSON-RPC API Documentation for API details.

Removal of Vote Creation RPC (createrawssgen)

The deprecated createrawssgen, which was previously used to allow creating a vote via RPC is no longer available. Votes are time sensitive and thus it does not make sense to create them offline.

Updates to Block and Transaction RPCs

The getblock, getblockheader, and getrawtransaction, and searchrawtransactions RPCs now contain additional information such as the extradata field in the header, the expiry field in transactions, and the blockheight and blockindex of the block that contains a transaction if it has been mined. See the JSON-RPC API Documentation for API details.

Built-in Support for Enabling External TLS RPC Connections

A new command line parameter (--altdnsnames) and environment variable (DCRD_ALT_DNSNAMES) can now be used before the first launch of drcd to specify additional external IP addresses and DNS names to add during the certificate creation that are permitted to connect to the RPC server via TLS. Previously, a separate tool was required to accomplish this configuration.

Changelog

All commits since the last release may be viewed on GitHub here.

Protocol and network:

Transaction relay (memory pool):

RPC:

dcrd command-line flags and configuration:

Documentation:

Developer-related package and module changes:

Testing and Quality Assurance:

Misc:

Code Contributors (alphabetical order):

  • Dave Collins
  • David Hill
  • Dmitry Fedorov
  • Donald Adu-Poku
  • ggoranov
  • githubsands
  • J Fixby
  • Jonathan Chappelow
  • Josh Rickmar
  • Matheus Degiovani
  • Sarlor
  • zhizhongzhiwai

dcrwallet v1.4.0-rc1

This release focuses on bug fixes and general improvements for both direct dcrwallet command line users and other projects building on top of dcrwallet (such as Decrediton and upcoming mobile wallets). A comprehensive list of improvements and bug fixes follows.

Bug fixes

  • Fixes were made to which and how many addresses and wallet UTXOs are watched by the SPV and RPC syncers. This prevents several bugs resulting from missed transactions, such as avoiding double spending errors and spends of unknown inputs.

  • Committed filter creation and validation is fixed on all ARM processors. Previously, an ARM assembly optimization could produce incorrect output for the siphash function.

  • During initial wallet creation, the database is now always cleanly closed before the process exits. Previously, this was a race and the new wallet database may have been missing writes during the initialization step.

  • RPC connection errors to dcrd are now properly logged

  • A possible deadlock situation was removed by adding a missing mutex unlock to the SPV peering implementation.

  • Error handling has been improved when querying unmined and unspent ticket transactions.

  • The total number of logged transactions processed by the RPC syncer has been fixed.

  • The process can be interrupted at startup if while being blocked on acquiring the wallet's database lock. Previously, the process would have needed to be killed, or wait for an existing running wallet to shutdown.

New features

  • The gRPC method WalletService.ValidateAddress now returns pubkey of P2PKH addresses and BIP0044 branch and child index if the address is controlled by the wallet.

  • The gRPC method WalletService.ImportScript is now usable by watching-only wallets.

  • The gRPC method WalletService.StakeInfo now includes counts of unspent tickets.

  • A new gRPC method TicketBuyerV2Service.RunTicketBuyer has been added to run the SPV-compatible ticket buyer.

  • A new gRPC method WalletService.GetTicket has been added to query the details of an individual ticket by its transaction hash.

  • A new gRPC method WalletService.SweepAccount has been added to sweep all UTXOs of an account to a single new output.

  • A new gRPC method WalletService.RpcSync has been added, providing a similar as SpvSync to perform wallet synchronization with a dcrd RPC connection.

  • The SPV and RPC syncers now support callbacks for syncing notifications. These notifications are also availble to gRPC clients who invoke the syncers.

  • Creating a new simnet wallet now shows an address that can be used for mining rewards.

  • RPC syncing connections to dcrd can now be proxied using the --proxy, --proxyuser, and --proxypass options.

Other improvements

  • Builds have been converted to use Go Modules. The repository has been split into various submodules, making it far easier to write applications that import dcrwallet packages as libraries.

  • Wallet database API is exported for projects that need support for alternative database drivers (such as dcrandroid).

  • Default transaction relay fee has been dropped to 0.0001 DCR/kB.

  • Transaction size and fee estimation is improved for ticket purchases and any transaction that redeems a P2SH output.

  • DCP0001-0003 now apply to simnet from the start of the chain (note that this is a hard fork for existing simnets).

  • Log files are never automatically deleted. Previously, log files would be rotated and old log files would be automatically removed. This has been changed to avoid the loss of potentially important logs.

  • Logs for unexpected database consistency issues have been improved by logging the keys and values

Changelog

All commits since the last release may be viewed on GitHub here.

decrediton v1.4.0-rc1

This decrediton release has been mostly dedicated to fixing nagging issues with users and cleaning up styling and design overall. We are also happy to include new features such as: alpha Trezor support, initial alternative color themes, enhanced Governance/Politeia integration and a prominent page to choose SPV or normal mode.

We are proud to introduce initial Trezor hardware wallet support. This includes the ability to create transactions in decrediton and then sign them with the connected device. We will be working hard to add staking on Trezor in the near future.

Alternative color themes have been a constantly suggested feature since the launch of decrediton. We have added an initial proof of concept for a dark theme toggle. The colors are not yet final and design will hopefully provide a series of possible themes instead of simply light and dark.

This release is the first to directly ask users on startup whether or not they would like to use SPV mode or not. This will hopefully increase SPV usage and provide better/faster wallet support for most users.

New features

  • Trezor integration has been added. This allows users to essentially use decrediton as watch-only wallet that is able to have its transactions signed directly by their Trezor device. Staking isn't yet currently available, but we'll be looking in to adding that soon. While we have tested and verified this initial Trezor integration, we will hold off on prominently advertising this until we can fully confirm it is bug free and secure.

  • Decrediton has switched to using the ticketbuyer v2 service from the wallet (instead of the old v1). Given that after DCP-0001 the ticket price has been stable, there's no need for that many configuration parameters anymore. Version 2 of the ticket buyer needs to be configured only with the source account, target stakepool and how much balance should be left spendable. The buyer will then purchase as many tickets as possible, while maintaining that balance.

  • Launcher Sync Stream. Now both modes (SPV/RPC) both use the same notification types to update during launching. This helps with being able to allow dcrwallet to handle all of the syncing and simply just update on similiar notifications. Previously, there were situations that were causing issues since syncing steps would be done out of order.

  • All users will see a new page on first load that lets them select whether or not they would like to enable SPV mode. We have also added a link to a newly created document explaining everything about SPV.

  • We have added an early proof of concept for color theme toggling. The colors for the added dark theme are still being finalized by design, but the button can be found on the Settings page.

  • Whenever a panic is detected by decrediton in dcrd or dcrwallet, users are now sent to a seperate fatal error screen where they will be able to copy the logs to be able to provide them to the developers and support. This will hopefully help users receive better direction to alleviate issues that are hitting.

  • Notifications have been completed restyled and fixed to allow for multiple simultaneous notifications. There is now a prominent closer button and timer for automatic notification closing.

Other improvements

  • Eeter and kylefirethought have delivered a whole new set of animated menu icons. These can be seen when hovering over a given menu page tab.

  • The Governance Page has received a large styling overhaul as provided by Eeter LLC. Most importantly, notification bubbles have been added to let users know when there are new proposals and votes to see.

  • Various clean up and refinement to the launcher. There were issues in SPV mode that were causing confusion about whether it was waiting to connect to a daemon to proceed or not. Now it should always be clear to the user when they need to resolve something to proceed or if they should expect to wait for something to happen.

  • We have updated some error messages to better explain to users what the problem is and how it can be resolved.

  • Watch-only wallets are now able to create unsigned transactions that can be transferred to an unlocked wallet for signing and subsequent broadcasting.

  • Add an import script button to the Add Stakepool form. There are some users that wish to simply import their script without having to communicate with any outside sources.

  • The min default relay fee was updated in dcrd a few releases ago and now the network has sufficiently upgraded to allow for wallet software to use 0.0001 DCR/kB as the default. Any transaction or ticket created in decrediton or dcrwallet should now use that minimum fee from now on.

  • Change to use the documentation subsystem to add the release notes. This will allow us to be more flexible when adding new release notes and letting users review older ones.

  • Add decrediton logs to the Logs tab underneath the Help page.

  • With the addition of getblockchaininfo json-rpc command in dcrd, we are now able to properly determine the progress of dcrd syncing. This removes the need to use outside sources to figure out know the syncing progress.

  • Transactions are now decoded within decrediton instead of being sent back to dcrwallet for decoding. This should help with performance to avoid an unnecessary request.

  • Chinese language has been extensively reviewed by long time Asian community contributor @Guang168

Bug fixes

  • There were various issues with the display of recent staking transactions on the Overview and the My Tickets pages.

  • Startup stats have been fixed to properly update and work better for large wallets

  • The application About button in macOS now also opens the About modal.

  • CSV exporting now correctly generates timestamps in UTC or local time based on app config (thanks to @rocknet for the first contribution).

Changelog

All commits since the last release may be viewed on GitHub here.

Contributors

rocknet and Guang168
Assets 18
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