dash/doc/release-notes.md
2022-10-17 11:31:26 -05:00

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Dash Core version v18.1.0

Release is now available from:

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

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

This release is optional 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 18.0.1, the first startup of Dash Core will run a migration process which can take anywhere from a few minutes to thirty 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 < v18.1.0

Downgrading to a version older than v18.1.0 is supported.

Downgrade to a version < v18.0.1

Downgrading to a version older than v18.0.1 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 < v18.0.1

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 This results in PoSe punishment/banning for outdated masternodes, so downgrading even prior to the activation of the introduced hard-fork changes is not recommended.

Versioning

Dash Core imperfectly follows semantic versioning. Breaking changes should be expected in a major release. The number and severity of breaking changes in minor releases are minimized, however we do not guarantee there are no breaking changes. Bitcoin backports often introduce breaking changes, and are a likely source of breaking changes in minor releases. Patch releases should never contain breaking changes.

This release does include breaking changes. Please read below to see if they will affect you.

Notable changes

BIP70 Support Removed

Support for the BIP70 Payment Protocol has been dropped from Dash Qt. Interacting with BIP70-formatted URIs will return an error message informing them of support removal. The allowselfsignedrootcertificates and rootcertificates launch arguments are no longer valid.

systemd init file

The systemd init file (contrib/init/dashd.service) has been changed to use /var/lib/dashd as the data directory instead of ~dash/.dash. This change makes Dash Core more consistent with other services, and makes the systemd init config more consistent with existing Upstart and OpenRC configs.

The configuration, PID, and data directories are now completely managed by systemd, which will take care of their creation, permissions, etc. See systemd.exec (5) for more details.

When using the provided init files under contrib/init, overriding the datadir option in /etc/dash/dash.conf will have no effect. This is because the command line arguments specified in the init files take precedence over the options specified in /etc/dash/dash.conf.

Account API removed

The 'account' API was deprecated in v18.0 and has been fully removed in v18.1. The 'label' API was introduced in v18.0 as a replacement for accounts.

See the release notes from v18.0.1 for a full description of the changes from the 'account' API to the 'label' API.

Build system changes

Python >=3.5 is now required by all aspects of the project. This includes the build systems, test framework and linters. The previously supported minimum (3.4), was EOL in March 2019. See bitcoin#14954 for more details.

Coin selection: Reuse Avoidance

A new wallet flag avoid_reuse has been added (default off). When enabled, a wallet will distinguish between used and unused addresses, and default to not use the former in coin selection.

(Note: rescanning the blockchain is required, to correctly mark previously used destinations.)

Together with "avoid partial spends" (present as of Bitcoin v0.17), this addresses a serious privacy issue where a malicious user can track spends by peppering a previously paid to address with near-dust outputs, which would then be inadvertently included in future payments.

Auto Loading Wallets

Wallets created or loaded in the GUI will now be automatically loaded on startup, so they don't need to be manually reloaded next time Bitcoin is started. The list of wallets to load on startup is stored in \<datadir\>/settings.json and augments any command line or bitcoin.conf -wallet= settings that specify more wallets to load. Wallets that are unloaded in the GUI get removed from the settings list so they won't load again automatically next startup. (bitcoin#19754)

The createwallet, loadwallet, and unloadwallet RPCs now accept load_on_startup options to modify the settings list. Unless these options are explicitly set to true or false, the list is not modified, so the RPC methods remain backwards compatible. (bitcoin#15937)

Changes regarding misbehaving peers

Peers that misbehave (e.g. send us invalid blocks) are now referred to as discouraged nodes in log output, as they're not (and weren't) strictly banned: incoming connections are still allowed from them, but they're preferred for eviction.

Furthermore, a few additional changes are introduced to how discouraged addresses are treated:

  • Discouraging an address does not time out automatically after 24 hours (or the -bantime setting). Depending on traffic from other peers, discouragement may time out at an indeterminate time.

  • Discouragement is not persisted over restarts.

  • There is no method to list discouraged addresses. They are not returned by the listbanned RPC. That RPC also no longer reports the ban_reason field, as "manually added" is the only remaining option.

  • Discouragement cannot be removed with the setban remove RPC command. If you need to remove a discouragement, you can remove all discouragements by stop-starting your node.

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:

  • A new setwalletflag RPC sets/unsets flags for an existing wallet.
  • The spork RPC call will no longer offer both get (labelled as "basic mode") and set (labelled as "advanced mode") functionality. spork will now only offer "basic" functionality. "Advanced" functionality is now exposed through the sporkupdate RPC call.
  • The generateblock RPC call will mine an array of ordered transactions, defined by hex array transactions that can contain either transaction IDs or a hex-encoded serialized raw transaction and set the coinbase destination defined by the address/descriptor argument.
  • The mockscheduler is a debug RPC call that allows forwarding the scheduler by delta_time. This RPC call is hidden and will only be functional on mockable chains (i.e. primarily regtest). delta_time must be between 0 - 3600.
  • dumptxoutset see bitcoin#16899 and the help text. This RPC is used for UTXO snapshot creation which is a part of the assume utxo project
  • generatetodescriptor Mine blocks immediately to a specified descriptor. see bitcoin#16943

The removed RPCs are:

  • The wallet's generate RPC method has been removed. generate is only used for testing. The RPC call reaches across multiple subsystems (wallet and mining), so is deprecated to simplify the wallet-node interface. Projects that are using generate for testing purposes should transition to using the generatetoaddress call, which does not require or use the wallet component. Calling generatetoaddress with an address returned by getnewaddress gives the same functionality as the old generate method.

Changes in existing RPCs introduced through bitcoin backports:

  • The gettxoutsetinfo RPC call now accept one optional argument (hash_type) that defines the algorithm used for calcluating the UTXO set hash, it will default to hash_serialized_2 unless explicitly specified otherwise. hash_type will influence the key that is used to refer to refer to the UTXO set hash.

  • The generatedescriptor RPC call has been introduced to allow mining a set number of blocks, defined by argument num_blocks, with the coinbase destination set to a descriptor, defined by the descriptor argument. The optional maxtries argument can be used to limit iterations.

  • Descriptors with key origin information imported through importmulti will have their key origin information stored in the wallet for use with creating PSBTs.

  • If bip32derivs of both walletprocesspsbt and walletcreatefundedpsbt is set to true but the key metadata for a public key has not been updated yet, then that key will have a derivation path as if it were just an independent key (i.e. no derivation path and its master fingerprint is itself)

  • The getblockstats RPC is faster for fee calculation by using BlockUndo data. Also, -txindex is no longer required and getblockstats works for all non-pruned blocks.

  • The unloadwallet RPC is now synchronous, meaning that it blocks until the wallet is fully unloaded.

  • RPCs which have an include_watchonly argument or includeWatching option now default to true for watch-only wallets. Affected RPCs are: getbalance, listreceivedbyaddress, listreceivedbylabel, listtransactions, listsinceblock, gettransaction, walletcreatefundedpsbt, and fundrawtransaction.

  • createwallet now returns a warning if an empty string is used as an encryption password, and does not encrypt the wallet, instead of raising an error. This makes it easier to disable encryption but also specify other options when using the bitcoin-cli tool.

  • The RPC joinpsbts will shuffle the order of the inputs and outputs of the resulting joined psbt. Previously inputs and outputs were added in the order that the PSBTs were provided which makes correlating inputs to outputs extremely easy.

  • importprivkey: new label behavior. Previously, importprivkey automatically added the default empty label ("") to all addresses associated with the imported private key. Now it defaults to using any existing label for those addresses. For example:

    • Old behavior: you import a watch-only address with the label "cold wallet". Later, you import the corresponding private key using the default settings. The address's label is changed from "cold wallet" to "".

    • New behavior: you import a watch-only address with the label "cold wallet". Later, you import the corresponding private key using the default settings. The address's label remains "cold wallet".

    In both the previous and current case, if you directly specify a label during the import, that label will override whatever previous label the addresses may have had. Also in both cases, if none of the addresses previously had a label, they will still receive the default empty label (""). Examples:

    • You import a watch-only address with the label "temporary". Later you import the corresponding private key with the label "final". The address's label will be changed to "final".
    • You use the default settings to import a private key for an address that was not previously in the wallet. Its addresses will receive the default empty label ("").
  • The createwallet, loadwallet, and unloadwallet RPCs now accept load_on_startup options to modify the settings list.

  • Several RPCs have been updated to include an "avoid_reuse" flag, used to control whether already used addresses should be left out or included in the operation. These include:

    • createwallet
    • getbalance
    • sendtoaddress

    In addition, sendtoaddress has been changed to enable -avoidpartialspends when avoid_reuse is enabled. The listunspent RPC has also been updated to now include a "reused" bool, for nodes with "avoid_reuse" enabled.

Dash-specific changes in existing RPCs:

  • In rpc upgradetohd new parameter rescan was added which allows users to skip or force blockchain rescan. This params defaults to false when mnemonic parameter is empty and true otherwise.

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:

  • RPC Whitelist system. It can give certain RPC users permissions to only some RPC calls. It can be set with two command line arguments (rpcwhitelist and rpcwhitelistdefault). (bitcoin#12763)

Removed cmd-line options:

  • The -zapwallettxes startup option has been removed and its functionality removed from the wallet. This option was originally intended to allow for the fee bumping of transactions that did not signal RBF. This functionality has been superseded with the abandon transaction feature.

Changes in existing cmd-line options:

  • 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).
  • Importing blocks upon startup via the bootstrap.dat file no longer occurs by default. The file must now be specified with -loadblock=<file>.

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

Backports from Bitcoin Core

This release introduces many hundreds updates from Bitcoin v0.18/v0.19/v0.20/v0.21/v22. Bitcoin changes that do not align with Dashs product needs, such as SegWit and RBF, are excluded from our backporting. For additional detail on whats included in Bitcoin, please refer to their release notes.

v18.1.0 Change log

See detailed set of changes.

Credits

Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:

  • Kittywhiskers Van Gogh
  • Konstantin Akimov
  • Munkybooty
  • Nathan Marley
  • Odysseas Gabrielides
  • Oleg Girko
  • PastaPastaPasta
  • strophy
  • thephez
  • UdjinM6
  • Vijay

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

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: