dash/doc/release-notes.md

Dash Core version v18.0.0

Release is now available from:

https://www.dash.org/downloads/#wallets

This is a new major version release, bringing new features, various bugfixes and other improvements.

This release is mandatory for all nodes.

Please report bugs using the issue tracker at github:

https://github.com/dashpay/dash/issues

Upgrading and downgrading

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/Dash-Qt (on Mac) or dashd/dash-qt (on Linux). If you upgrade after DIP0003 activation and you were using version < 0.13 you will have to reindex (start with -reindex-chainstate or -reindex) to make sure your wallet has all the new data synced. Upgrading from version 0.13 should not require any additional actions.

When upgrading from a version prior to 0.14.0.3, the first startup of Dash Core will run a migration process which can take a few minutes to finish. After the migration, a downgrade to an older version is only possible with a reindex (or reindex-chainstate).

Downgrade warning

Downgrade to a version < v18.0.0

Downgrading to a version older than v18.0.0 is not supported due to changes in the indexes database folder. If you need to use an older version, you must either reindex or re-sync the whole chain.

Downgrade of masternodes to < v18.0.0

Starting with the 0.16 release, masternodes verify the protocol version of other masternodes. This results in PoSe punishment/banning for outdated masternodes, so downgrading even prior to the activation of the introduced hard-fork changes is not recommended.

Notable changes

Quorum rotation

InstantSend quorums will now use a new quorum type and a new algorithm for establishing quorums. The upcoming DIP-0024 will provide comprehensive details.

Quorum rotation is activated via a BIP9 style hard fork that will begin signalling on August 15, 2022 using bit 7. New quorums will start forming in 1152-1440 block range after the activation. Any nodes that do not upgrade by that time will diverge from the rest of the network.

Deterministic InstantSend

Deterministically verifying InstantSend locks at any point in the future has been added to support Dash Platform. This update introduces versioning to InstantSend messages and adds quorum information to them. While the previous design was sufficient for core chain payments, the platform chain will benefit from this enhanced verification capability. Details about deterministic InstantSend are provided in DIP-0022.

Deterministic InstantSend will be activated with the DIP0024 hard fork.

Governance

Several improvements have been made to Dash’s DAO governance system. The governance proposal fee has been reduced from 5 Dash to 1 Dash following a vote by masternode owners to do so. For improved security and flexibility, proposal payouts to pay-to-script-hash (P2SH) addresses are now supported.

These changes will be activated with the DIP0024 hard fork.

Governance proposals can now be viewed in GUI Governance tab (must be enabled in Preferences first).

Initial Enhanced Hard Fork support

The masternode hard fork signal special transaction has been added as the first step in enabling an improved hard fork mechanism. This enhancement enables future hard forks to be activated quickly and safely without any “race conditions” if miners and masternodes update at significantly different speeds. Effectively there will be a masternode signal on chain in addition to the miner one to ensure smooth transitions. Details of the enhanced hard fork system are provided in DIP-0023.

Network improvements

We implemented and backported implementations of several improvement proposals. You can read more about implemented changes in the following documents:

• DIP-0025: Compressed headers.
• BIP 155: The 'addrv2' and 'sendaddrv2' messages which enable relay of Tor V3 addresses (and other networks).
• BIP 158: Compact Block Filters for Light Clients.

KeePass support removed

Please make sure to move your coins to a wallet with a regular passphrase.

Wallet changes

We continued backporting wallet functionality updates. Most notable changes are:

• Added support for empty, encrypted-on-creation and watch-only wallets.
• Wallets can now be created, opened and closed via a GUI menu.
• No more salvagewallet option in cmd-line and Repair tab in GUI. Check the salvage command in the dash-wallet tool.

Indexes

The transaction index is moved into indexes/ folder. The migration of the old data is done on the first run and does not require reindexing. Note that the data in the old path is removed which means that this change is not backwards compatible and you'll have to reindex the whole blockchain if you decide to downgrade to a pre-v18.0.0 version.

Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Changes

Most changes here were introduced through Bitcoin backports mostly related to the deprecation of wallet accounts in DashCore v0.17 and introduction of PSBT format.

The new RPCs are:

• combinepsbt
• converttopsbt
• createpsbt
• decodepsbt
• deriveaddresses
• finalizepsbt
• getblockfilter
• getdescriptorinfo
• getnodeaddresses
• getrpcinfo
• joinpsbts
• listwalletdir
• quorum rotationinfo
• scantxoutset
• submitheader
• testmempoolaccept
• utxoupdatepsbt
• walletcreatefundedpsbt
• walletprocesspsbt

The removed RPCs are:

• estimatefee
• getinfo
• getreceivedbyaccount
• keepass
• listaccounts
• listreceivedbyaccount
• move
• resendwallettransactions
• sendfrom
• signrawtransaction

Changes in existing RPCs introduced through bitcoin backports:

• The testnet field in dash-cli -getinfo has been renamed to chain and now returns the current network name as defined in BIP70 (main, test, regtest).
• Added window_final_block_height in getchaintxstats
• Added feerate_percentiles object with feerates at the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentile weight unit instead of medianfeerate in getblockstats
• In getmempoolancestors, getmempooldescendants, getmempoolentry and getrawmempool RPCs, to be consistent with the returned value and other RPCs such as getrawtransaction, vsize has been added and size is now deprecated. size will only be returned if dashd is started with -deprecatedrpc=size.
• Added loaded in mempool related RPCs indicates whether the mempool is fully loaded or not
• Added localservicesnames in getnetworkinfo list the services the node offers to the network, in human-readable form (in addition to an already existing localservices hex string)
• Added hwm in getzmqnotifications
• createwallet can create blank, encrypted or watch-only wallets now.
• Added private_keys_enabled in getwalletinfo
• Added solvable, desc, ischange and hdmasterfingerprint in getaddressinfo
• Added desc in listunspent

Dash-specific changes in existing RPCs:

• Added quorumIndex in quorum getinfo and quorum memberof
• In rpc masternodelist with parameters full, info and json the PoS penalty score of the MN will be returned. For json parameter, the field pospenaltyscore was added.

Please check help <command> for more detailed information on specific RPCs.

Command-line options

Most changes here were introduced through Bitcoin backports.

New cmd-line options:

• asmap
• avoidpartialspends
• blockfilterindex
• blocksonly
• llmqinstantsenddip0024
• llmqtestinstantsendparams
• maxuploadtarget
• natpmp
• peerblockfilters
• powtargetspacing
• stdinwalletpassphrase
• zmqpubhashchainlock
• zmqpubrawchainlock

The option to set the PUB socket's outbound message high water mark (SNDHWM) may be set individually for each notification:

• -zmqpubhashtxhwm=n
• -zmqpubhashblockhwm=n
• -zmqpubhashchainlockhwm=n
• -zmqpubhashtxlockhwm=n
• -zmqpubhashgovernancevotehwm=n
• -zmqpubhashgovernanceobjecthwm=n
• -zmqpubhashinstantsenddoublespendhwm=n
• -zmqpubhashrecoveredsighwm=n
• -zmqpubrawblockhwm=n
• -zmqpubrawtxhwm=n
• -zmqpubrawchainlockhwm=n
• -zmqpubrawchainlocksighwm=n
• -zmqpubrawtxlockhwm=n
• -zmqpubrawtxlocksighwm=n
• -zmqpubrawgovernancevotehwm=n
• -zmqpubrawgovernanceobjecthwm=n
• -zmqpubrawinstantsenddoublespendhwm=n
• -zmqpubrawrecoveredsighwm=n

Removed cmd-line options:

• keepass
• keepassport
• keepasskey
• keepassid
• keepassname
• salvagewallet

Changes in existing cmd-line options:

Please check Help -> Command-line options in Qt wallet or dashd --help for more information.

Backports from Bitcoin Core

This release introduces over 1000 updates from Bitcoin v0.18/v0.19/v0.20 as well as numerous updates from Bitcoin v0.21 and more recent versions. This includes multi-wallet support in the GUI, support for partially signed transactions (PSBT), Tor version 3 support, and a number of other updates that will benefit Dash users. Bitcoin changes that do not align with Dash’s product needs, such as SegWit and RBF, are excluded from our backporting. For additional detail on what’s included in Bitcoin, please refer to their release notes – v0.18, v0.19, v0.20.

Miscellaneous

A lot of refactoring, code cleanups and other small fixes were done in this release.

v18.0.0 Change log

See detailed set of changes.

Credits

Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:

• AJ ONeal (coolaj86)
• Christian Fifi Culp (christiancfifi)
• dustinface (xdustinface)
• gabriel-bjg
• Holger Schinzel (schinzelh)
• humbleDasher
• Kittywhiskers Van Gogh (kittywhiskers)
• Konstantin Akimov (knst)
• ktechmidas
• linuxsh2
• Munkybooty
• Nathan Marley (nmarley)
• Odysseas Gabrielides (ogabrielides)
• PastaPastaPasta
• pravblockc
• rkarthik2k21
• Stefan (5tefan)
• strophy
• TheLazieR Yip (thelazier)
• thephez
• UdjinM6
• Vijay (vijaydasmp)
• Vlad K (dzutto)

As well as everyone that submitted issues, reviewed pull requests, helped debug the release candidates, and write DIPs that were implemented in this release. Notable mentions include:

• Samuel Westrich (quantumexplorer)
• Virgile Bartolo
• xkcd

Older releases

Dash was previously known as Darkcoin.

Darkcoin tree 0.8.x was a fork of Litecoin tree 0.8, original name was XCoin which was first released on Jan/18/2014.

Darkcoin tree 0.9.x was the open source implementation of masternodes based on the 0.8.x tree and was first released on Mar/13/2014.

Darkcoin tree 0.10.x used to be the closed source implementation of Darksend which was released open source on Sep/25/2014.

Dash Core tree 0.11.x was a fork of Bitcoin Core tree 0.9, Darkcoin was rebranded to Dash.

Dash Core tree 0.12.0.x was a fork of Bitcoin Core tree 0.10.

Dash Core tree 0.12.1.x was a fork of Bitcoin Core tree 0.12.

These release are considered obsolete. Old release notes can be found here:

• v0.17.0.3 released June/07/2021
• v0.17.0.2 released May/19/2021
• v0.16.1.1 released November/17/2020
• v0.16.1.0 released November/14/2020
• v0.16.0.1 released September/30/2020
• v0.15.0.0 released Febrary/18/2020
• v0.14.0.5 released December/08/2019
• v0.14.0.4 released November/22/2019
• v0.14.0.3 released August/15/2019
• v0.14.0.2 released July/4/2019
• v0.14.0.1 released May/31/2019
• v0.14.0 released May/22/2019
• v0.13.3 released Apr/04/2019
• v0.13.2 released Mar/15/2019
• v0.13.1 released Feb/9/2019
• v0.13.0 released Jan/14/2019
• v0.12.3.4 released Dec/14/2018
• v0.12.3.3 released Sep/19/2018
• v0.12.3.2 released Jul/09/2018
• v0.12.3.1 released Jul/03/2018
• v0.12.2.3 released Jan/12/2018
• v0.12.2.2 released Dec/17/2017
• v0.12.2 released Nov/08/2017
• v0.12.1 released Feb/06/2017
• v0.12.0 released Aug/15/2015
• v0.11.2 released Mar/04/2015
• v0.11.1 released Feb/10/2015
• v0.11.0 released Jan/15/2015
• v0.10.x released Sep/25/2014
• v0.9.x released Mar/13/2014