T8.1 — The One That Solved Ludicrous Memory Usage

Among other improvements and fixes, this version completes the integration of the "Collaterals" feature, and hugely reduces the memory footprint of the node software, which had increased a lot with T8.0.

Remember that the recommended procedure for updating your node is this:

1. Stop your Docker container: docker stop witnet_node
2. Pulll the latest Docker image: docker pull witnet/witnet-rust
3. Start your Docker container again: docker start witnet_node

As usual, you can check that the upgrade went right with this command:

docker exec witnet_node ./witnet node --version

This is a coordinated scheduled network bootstrap: as soon as you run your node, it will start peering with other nodes in the network but it will not mine until the genesis checkpoint (May 21 at 10am UTC).

Operators not using Docker need to update witnet.toml files so they look like this one. Special attention must be given to the new public_addr, which should contain their public IP and port.

This release bootstraps a new network with a fresh genesis block that is totally empty. Operators not using Docker DO need to update the genesis_block.json file this time (download below).

Privacy considerations

This release adds automatic bug reporting (aka "telemetry") using Sentry. Every time a bug happens in your node, the trace of the error and some basic system information will be anonymously reported to the developers.

This helps the community better troubleshoot errors and will hopefully lead to a quicker and more effective improvement of the software (i.e. we'll be mainnet-ready sooner).

This feature can be disabled through the witnet.toml configuration file by setting sentry_telemetry to false or simply deleting the sentry_telemetry line.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to everyone in the community for their eagerness and constant support for the advancement of the ecosystem.