path: root/doc/release-notes.md

Bitcoin Core version 0.13.1 is now available from:

  <https://bitcoin.org/bin/bitcoin-core-0.13.1/>

This is a new minor version release, including activation parameters for the
segwit softfork, various bugfixes 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/>

Compatibility
==============

Microsoft ended support for Windows XP on [April 8th, 2014](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/WindowsForBusiness/end-of-xp-support),
an OS initially released in 2001. This means that not even critical security
updates will be released anymore. Without security updates, using a bitcoin
wallet on a XP machine is irresponsible at least.

In addition to that, with 0.12.x there have been varied reports of Bitcoin Core
randomly crashing on Windows XP. It is [not clear](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/7681#issuecomment-217439891)
what the source of these crashes is, but it is likely that upstream
libraries such as Qt are no longer being tested on XP.

We do not have time nor resources to provide support for an OS that is
end-of-life. From 0.13.0 on, Windows XP is no longer supported. Users are
suggested to upgrade to a newer version of Windows, or install an alternative OS
that is supported.

No attempt is made to prevent installing or running the software on Windows XP,
you can still do so at your own risk, but do not expect it to work: do not
report issues about Windows XP to the issue tracker.

Notable changes
===============

Segregated witness soft fork
----------------------------

Segregated witness (segwit) is a soft fork that, if activated, will
allow transaction-producing software to separate (segregate) transaction
signatures (witnesses) from the part of the data in a transaction that is
covered by the txid. This provides several immediate benefits:

- **Elimination of unwanted transaction malleability:** Segregating the witness
  allows both existing and upgraded software to calculate the transaction
  identifier (txid) of transactions without referencing the witness, which can
  sometimes be changed by third-parties (such as miners) or by co-signers in a
  multisig spend. This solves all known cases of unwanted transaction
  malleability, which is a problem that makes programming Bitcoin wallet
  software more difficult and which seriously complicates the design of smart
  contracts for Bitcoin.

- **Capacity increase:** Segwit transactions contain new fields that are not
  part of the data currently used to calculate the size of a block, which
  allows a block containing segwit transactions to hold more data than allowed
  by the current maximum block size. Estimates based on the transactions
  currently found in blocks indicate that if all wallets switch to using
  segwit, the network will be able to support about 70% more transactions. The
  network will also be able to support more of the advanced-style payments
  (such as multisig) than it can support now because of the different weighting
  given to different parts of a transaction after segwit activates (see the
  following section for details).

- **Weighting data based on how it affects node performance:** Some parts of
  each Bitcoin block need to be stored by nodes in order to validate future
  blocks; other parts of a block can be immediately forgotten (pruned) or used
  only for helping other nodes sync their copy of the block chain.  One large
  part of the immediately prunable data are transaction signatures (witnesses),
  and segwit makes it possible to give a different "weight" to segregated
  witnesses to correspond with the lower demands they place on node resources.
  Specifically, each byte of a segregated witness is given a weight of 1, each
  other byte in a block is given a weight of 4, and the maximum allowed weight
  of a block is 4 million.  Weighting the data this way better aligns the most
  profitable strategy for creating blocks with the long-term costs of block
  validation.

- **Signature covers value:** A simple improvement in the way signatures are
  generated in segwit simplifies the design of secure signature generators
  (such as hardware wallets), reduces the amount of data the signature
  generator needs to download, and allows the signature generator to operate
  more quickly.  This is made possible by having the generator sign the amount
  of bitcoins they think they are spending, and by having full nodes refuse to
  accept those signatures unless the amount of bitcoins being spent is exactly
  the same as was signed.  For non-segwit transactions, wallets instead had to
  download the complete previous transactions being spent for every payment
  they made, which could be a slow operation on hardware wallets and in other
  situations where bandwidth or computation speed was constrained.

- **Linear scaling of sighash operations:** In 2015 a block was produced that
  required about 25 seconds to validate on modern hardware because of the way
  transaction signature hashes are performed.  Other similar blocks, or blocks
  that could take even longer to validate, can still be produced today.  The
  problem that caused this can't be fixed in a soft fork without unwanted
  side-effects, but transactions that opt-in to using segwit will now use a
  different signature method that doesn't suffer from this problem and doesn't
  have any unwanted side-effects.

- **Increased security for multisig:** Bitcoin addresses (both P2PKH addresses
  that start with a '1' and P2SH addresses that start with a '3') use a hash
  function known as RIPEMD-160.  For P2PKH addresses, this provides about 160
  bits of security---which is beyond what cryptographers believe can be broken
  today.  But because P2SH is more flexible, only about 80 bits of security is
  provided per address. Although 80 bits is very strong security, it is within
  the realm of possibility that it can be broken by a powerful adversary.
  Segwit allows advanced transactions to use the SHA256 hash function instead,
  which provides about 128 bits of security  (that is 281 trillion times as
  much security as 80 bits and is equivalent to the maximum bits of security
  believed to be provided by Bitcoin's choice of parameters for its Elliptic
  Curve Digital Security Algorithm [ECDSA].)

- **More efficient almost-full-node security** Satoshi Nakamoto's original
  Bitcoin paper describes a method for allowing newly-started full nodes to
  skip downloading and validating some data from historic blocks that are
  protected by large amounts of proof of work.  Unfortunately, Nakamoto's
  method can't guarantee that a newly-started node using this method will
  produce an accurate copy of Bitcoin's current ledger (called the UTXO set),
  making the node vulnerable to falling out of consensus with other nodes.
  Although the problems with Nakamoto's method can't be fixed in a soft fork,
  Segwit accomplishes something similar to his original proposal: it makes it
  possible for a node to optionally skip downloading some blockchain data
  (specifically, the segregated witnesses) while still ensuring that the node
  can build an accurate copy of the UTXO set for the block chain with the most
  proof of work.  Segwit enables this capability at the consensus layer, but
  note that Bitcoin Core does not provide an option to use this capability as
  of this 0.13.1 release.

- **Script versioning:** Segwit makes it easy for future soft forks to allow
  Bitcoin users to individually opt-in to almost any change in the Bitcoin
  Script language when those users receive new transactions.  Features
  currently being researched by Bitcoin Core contributors that may use this
  capability include support for Schnorr signatures, which can improve the
  privacy and efficiency of multisig transactions (or transactions with
  multiple inputs), and Merklized Abstract Syntax Trees (MAST), which can
  improve the privacy and efficiency of scripts with two or more conditions.
  Other Bitcoin community members are studying several other improvements
  that can be made using script versioning.

Activation for the segwit soft fork is being managed using BIP9
versionbits.  Segwit's version bit is bit 1, and nodes will begin
tracking which blocks signal support for segwit at the beginning of the
first retarget period after segwit's start date of 15 November 2016.  If
95% of blocks within a 2,016-block retarget period (about two weeks)
signal support for segwit, the soft fork will be locked in.  After
another 2,016 blocks, segwit will activate.

For more information about segwit, please see the [segwit FAQ][], the
[segwit wallet developers guide][] or BIPs [141][BIP141], [143][BIP143],
[144][BIP144], and [145][BIP145].  If you're a miner or mining pool
operator, please see the [versionbits FAQ][] for information about
signaling support for a soft fork.

[Segwit FAQ]: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits/
[segwit wallet developers guide]: https://bitcoincore.org/en/segwit_wallet_dev/
[BIP141]: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0141.mediawiki
[BIP143]: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0143.mediawiki
[BIP144]: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0144.mediawiki
[BIP145]: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0145.mediawiki
[versionbits FAQ]: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/06/08/version-bits-miners-faq/


Null dummy soft fork
-------------------

Combined with the segwit soft fork is an additional change that turns a
long-existing network relay policy into a consensus rule. The
`OP_CHECKMULTISIG` and `OP_CHECKMULTISIGVERIFY` opcodes consume an extra
stack element ("dummy element") after signature validation. The dummy
element is not inspected in any manner, and could be replaced by any
value without invalidating the script.

Because any value can be used for this dummy element, it's possible for
a third-party to insert data into other people's transactions, changing
the transaction's txid (called transaction malleability) and possibly
causing other problems.

Since Bitcoin Core 0.10.0, nodes have defaulted to only relaying and
mining transactions whose dummy element was a null value (0x00, also
called OP_0).  The null dummy soft fork turns this relay rule into a
consensus rule both for non-segwit transactions and segwit transactions,
so that this method of mutating transactions is permanently eliminated
from the network.

Signaling for the null dummy soft fork is done by signaling support
for segwit, and the null dummy soft fork will activate at the same time
as segwit.

For more information, please see [BIP147][].

[BIP147]: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0147.mediawiki

Low-level RPC changes
---------------------

- `importprunedfunds` only accepts two required arguments. Some versions accept
  an optional third arg, which was always ignored. Make sure to never pass more
  than two arguments.


Linux ARM builds
----------------

With the 0.13.0 release, pre-built Linux ARM binaries were added to the set of
uploaded executables. Additional detail on the ARM architecture targeted by each
is provided below.

The following extra files can be found in the download directory or torrent:

- `bitcoin-${VERSION}-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz`: Linux binaries targeting
  the 32-bit ARMv7-A architecture.
- `bitcoin-${VERSION}-aarch64-linux-gnu.tar.gz`: Linux binaries targeting
  the 64-bit ARMv8-A architecture.

ARM builds are still experimental. If you have problems on a certain device or
Linux distribution combination please report them on the bug tracker, it may be
possible to resolve them. Note that the device you use must be (backward)
compatible with the architecture targeted by the binary that you use.
For example, a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B or Raspberry Pi 3 Model B (in its 32-bit
execution state) device, can run the 32-bit ARMv7-A targeted binary. However,
no model of Raspberry Pi 1 device can run either binary because they are all
ARMv6 architecture devices that are not compatible with ARMv7-A or ARMv8-A.

Note that Android is not considered ARM Linux in this context. The executables
are not expected to work out of the box on Android.


0.13.1 Change log
=================

Detailed release notes follow. This overview includes changes that affect
behavior, not code moves, refactors and string updates. For convenience in locating
the code changes and accompanying discussion, both the pull request and
git merge commit are mentioned.

### Consensus
- #8636 `9dfa0c8` Implement NULLDUMMY softfork (BIP147) (jl2012)
- #8848 `7a34a46` Add NULLDUMMY verify flag in bitcoinconsensus.h (jl2012)
- #8937 `8b66659` Define start and end time for segwit deployment (sipa)

### RPC and other APIs
- #8581 `526d2b0` Drop misleading option in importprunedfunds (MarcoFalke)
- #8699 `a5ec248` Remove createwitnessaddress RPC command (jl2012)
- #8780 `794b007` Deprecate getinfo (MarcoFalke)
- #8832 `83ad563` Throw JSONRPCError when utxo set can not be read (MarcoFalke)
- #8884 `b987348` getblockchaininfo help: pruneheight is the lowest, not highest, block (luke-jr)
- #8858 `3f508ed` rpc: Generate auth cookie in hex instead of base64 (laanwj)
- #8951 `7c2bf4b` RPC/Mining: getblocktemplate: Update and fix formatting of help (luke-jr)

### Block and transaction handling
- #8611 `a9429ca` Reduce default number of blocks to check at startup (sipa)
- #8634 `3e80ab7` Add policy: null signature for failed CHECK(MULTI)SIG (jl2012)
- #8525 `1672225` Do not store witness txn in rejection cache (sipa)
- #8499 `9777fe1` Add several policy limits and disable uncompressed keys for segwit scripts (jl2012)
- #8526 `0027672` Make non-minimal OP_IF/NOTIF argument non-standard for P2WSH (jl2012)
- #8524 `b8c79a0` Precompute sighashes (sipa)
- #8651 `b8c79a0` Predeclare PrecomputedTransactionData as struct (sipa)

### P2P protocol and network code
- #8740 `42ea51a` No longer send local address in addrMe (laanwj)
- #8427 `69d1cd2` Ignore `notfound` P2P messages (laanwj)
- #8573 `4f84082` Set jonasschnellis dns-seeder filter flag (jonasschnelli)
- #8712 `23feab1` Remove maxuploadtargets recommended minimum (jonasschnelli)
- #8862 `7ae6242` Fix a few cases where messages were sent after requested disconnect (theuni)
- #8393 `fe1975a` Support for compact blocks together with segwit (sipa)
- #8282 `2611ad7` Feeler connections to increase online addrs in the tried table (EthanHeilman)
- #8612 `2215c22` Check for compatibility with download in FindNextBlocksToDownload (sipa)
- #8606 `bbf379b` Fix some locks (sipa)
- #8594 `ab295bb` Do not add random inbound peers to addrman (gmaxwell)
- #8940 `5b4192b` Add x9 service bit support to dnsseed.bluematt.me, seed.bitcoinstats.com (TheBlueMatt, cdecker)
- #8944 `685e4c7` Remove bogus assert on number of oubound connections. (TheBlueMatt)
- #8949 `0dbc48a` Be more agressive in getting connections to peers with relevant services (gmaxwell)

### Build system
- #8293 `fa5b249` Allow building libbitcoinconsensus without any univalue (luke-jr)
- #8492 `8b0bdd3` Allow building bench_bitcoin by itself (luke-jr)
- #8563 `147003c` Add configure check for -latomic (ajtowns)
- #8626 `ea51b0f` Berkeley DB v6 compatibility fix (netsafe)
- #8520 `75f2065` Remove check for `openssl/ec.h` (laanwj)

### GUI
- #8481 `d9f0d4e` Fix minimize and close bugs (adlawren)
- #8487 `a37cec5` Persist the datadir after option reset (achow101)
- #8697 `41fd852` Fix op order to append first alert (rodasmith)
- #8678 `8e03382` Fix UI bug that could result in paying unexpected fee (jonasschnelli)
- #8911 `7634d8e` Translate all files, even if wallet disabled (laanwj)
- #8540 `1db3352` Fix random segfault when closing "Choose data directory" dialog (laanwj)
- #7579 `f1c0d78` Show network/chain errors in the GUI (jonasschnelli)

### Wallet
- #8443 `464dedd` Trivial cleanup of HD wallet changes (jonasschnelli)
- #8539 `cb07f19` CDB: fix debug output (crowning-)
- #8664 `091cdeb` Fix segwit-related wallet bug (sdaftuar)
- #8693 `c6a6291` Add witness address to address book (instagibbs)
- #8765 `6288659` Remove "unused" ThreadFlushWalletDB from removeprunedfunds (jonasschnelli)

### Tests and QA
- #8713 `ae8c7df` create_cache: Delete temp dir when done (MarcoFalke)
- #8716 `e34374e` Check legacy wallet as well (MarcoFalke)
- #8750 `d6ebe13` Refactor RPCTestHandler to prevent TimeoutExpired (MarcoFalke)
- #8652 `63462c2` remove root test directory for RPC tests (yurizhykin)
- #8724 `da94272` walletbackup: Sync blocks inside the loop (MarcoFalke)
- #8400 `bea02dc` enable rpcbind_test (yurizhykin)
- #8417 `f70be14` Add walletdump RPC test (including HD- & encryption-tests) (jonasschnelli)
- #8419 `a7aa3cc` Enable size accounting in mining unit tests (sdaftuar)
- #8442 `8bb1efd` Rework hd wallet dump test (MarcoFalke)
- #8528 `3606b6b` Update p2p-segwit.py to reflect correct behavior (instagibbs)
- #8531 `a27cdd8` abandonconflict: Use assert_equal (MarcoFalke)
- #8667 `6b07362` Fix SIGHASH_SINGLE bug in test_framework SignatureHash (jl2012)
- #8673 `03b0196` Fix obvious assignment/equality error in test (JeremyRubin)
- #8739 `cef633c` Fix broken sendcmpct test in p2p-compactblocks.py (sdaftuar)
- #8418 `ff893aa` Add tests for compact blocks (sdaftuar)
- #8803 `375437c` Ping regularly in p2p-segwit.py to keep connection alive (jl2012)
- #8827 `9bbe66e` Split up slow RPC calls to avoid pruning test timeouts (sdaftuar)
- #8829 `2a8bca4` Add bitcoin-tx JSON tests (jnewbery)
- #8834 `1dd1783` blockstore: Switch to dumb dbm (MarcoFalke)
- #8835 `d87227d` nulldummy.py: Don't run unused code (MarcoFalke)
- #8836 `eb18cc1` bitcoin-util-test.py should fail if the output file is empty (jnewbery)
- #8839 `31ab2f8` Avoid ConnectionResetErrors during RPC tests (laanwj)
- #8840 `cbc3fe5` Explicitly set encoding to utf8 when opening text files (laanwj)
- #8841 `3e4abb5` Fix nulldummy test (jl2012)
- #8854 `624a007` Fix race condition in p2p-compactblocks test (sdaftuar)
- #8857 `1f60d45` mininode: Only allow named args in wait_until (MarcoFalke)
- #8860 `0bee740` util: Move wait_bitcoinds() into stop_nodes() (MarcoFalke)
- #8882 `b73f065` Fix race conditions in p2p-compactblocks.py and sendheaders.py (sdaftuar)
- #8904 `cc6f551` Fix compact block shortids for a test case (dagurval)

### Documentation
- #8754 `0e2c6bd` Target protobuf 2.6 in OS X build notes. (fanquake)
- #8461 `b17a3f9` Document return value of networkhashps for getmininginfo RPC endpoint (jlopp)
- #8512 `156e305` Corrected JSON typo on setban of net.cpp (sevastos)
- #8683 `8a7d7ff` Fix incorrect file name bitcoin.qrc  (bitcoinsSG)
- #8891 `5e0dd9e` Update bips.md for Segregated Witness (fanquake)
- #8545 `863ae74` Update git-subtree-check.sh README (MarcoFalke)
- #8607 `486650a` Fix doxygen off-by-one comments, fix typos (MarcoFalke)
- #8560 `c493f43` Fix two VarInt examples in serialize.h (cbarcenas)
- #8737 `084cae9` UndoReadFromDisk works on undo files (rev), not on block files (paveljanik)
- #8625 `0a35573` Clarify statement about parallel jobs in rpc-tests.py (isle2983)
- #8624 `0e6d753` build: Mention curl (MarcoFalke)
- #8604 `b09e13c` build,doc: Update for 0.13.0+ and OpenBSD 5.9 (laanwj)
- #8939 `06d15fb` Update implemented bips for 0.13.1 (sipa)

### Miscellaneous
- #8742 `d31ac72` Specify Protobuf version 2 in paymentrequest.proto (fanquake)
- #8414,#8558,#8676,#8700,#8701,#8702 Add missing copyright headers (isle2983, kazcw)
- #8899 `4ed2627` Fix wake from sleep issue with Boost 1.59.0 (fanquake)
- #8817 `bcf3806` update bitcoin-tx to output witness data (jnewbery)
- #8513 `4e5fc31` Fix a type error that would not compile on OSX. (JeremyRubin)
- #8392 `30eac2d` Fix several node initialization issues (sipa)
- #8548 `305d8ac` Use `__func__` to get function name for output printing (MarcoFalke)
- #8291 `a987431` [util] CopyrightHolders: Check for untranslated substitution (MarcoFalke)

Credits
=======

Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:

- adlawren
- Alexey Vesnin
- Anders Øyvind Urke-Sætre
- Andrew Chow
- Anthony Towns
- BtcDrak
- Chris Stewart
- Christian Barcenas
- Christian Decker
- Cory Fields
- crowning-
- Dagur Valberg Johannsson
- David A. Harding
- Eric Lombrozo
- Ethan Heilman
- fanquake
- Gaurav Rana
- Gregory Maxwell
- instagibbs
- isle2983
- Jameson Lopp
- Jeremy Rubin
- jnewbery
- Johnson Lau
- Jonas Schnelli
- jonnynewbs
- Justin Camarena
- Kaz Wesley
- leijurv
- Luke Dashjr
- MarcoFalke
- Marty Jones
- Matt Corallo
- Micha
- Michael Ford
- mruddy
- Pavel Janík
- Pieter Wuille
- rodasmith
- Sev
- Suhas Daftuar
- whythat
- Wladimir J. van der Laan

As well as everyone that helped translating on [Transifex](https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/bitcoin/).