The Book of Bitcoin

Bitcoin Release History

Bitcoin Core Versions

0.14.0 - March 8, 2017 - 101 Contributors

  • Improved sync time through signature cache optimization.
  • Added assumed-valid blocks which allows for simple script validation check bypassing for known-good blocks.
  • Improved peer to peer networking speed with a code refactoring
  • Adjusted UTXO cache to claim unused mempool memory, speeding up initial block download
  • Added pruning via RPC call pruneblockchain
  • Deprecated getinfo
  • Added ZMQ support for Windows
  • Added nested commands to GUI debug console
  • Added p2p network toggle to GUI to disable the p2p network and a new RPC command setnetworkactive to do the same thing
  • Added syncing modal overlay to indicate syncing status when catching up to chain head
  • Added support for JSON RPC named arguments
  • Added walletrbf option to use opt-in RBF for transactions and a bumpfee command in the RPC to increase the fee of an RBF transaction
  • Removed sensitive information from debug console command history
  • Added feature to preserve the mempool across restarts
  • Added a final alert to permanently disable the alert system
  • Added HD wallet indicator to the GUI
  • Removed the priority system for transactions

0.13.2 - January 3, 2017

  • Ended support for OS X 10.7
  • Various bug fixes

0.13.1 - October 27, 2016

  • Added Segregated Witness soft fork activation
  • Added soft fork to fix the null-dummy 3rd party transaction malleation bug

0.13.0 - August 23, 2016 - 101 Contributors

  • Ended support for Windows XP
  • Increased default dbcache to 300mb from 100mb to speed up initial sync
  • Added -stdin argument for command line input secrecy
  • Added Linux ARM builds to releases
  • Added Compact Block support (BIP 152) which greatly improves relay efficiency
  • Added HD Key Generation which allows restoration of bitcoins with a single backup instead of constant backups
  • Added Segregated Witness for testnet, without activation on mainnet
  • Added Child-Pays-For-Parent to allow miners to optimally earn mining fees and users to increase effective fees of parent transactions
  • Removed CPU miner
  • Added feefilter messages to the P2P protocol to avoid relaying low fee transactions
  • Removed the alert system due to a potential DOS vector, leak concerns
  • Added UTF-8 support to the JSON RPC API
  • Added JSON RPC API support for representing CSV and CLTV
  • Added JSON RPC commands: generatetoaddress, importprunedfunds, removeprunedfunds, signmessagewithprivkey, getmempoolancestors, getmempooldescendants, getmempoolentry, createwitnessaddress, addwitnessaddress

0.12.1 - April 15, 2016

  • Added BIP 9 system for allowing miners to signal multiple soft forks simultaneously
  • Added BIP 68 soft fork for allowing transactions to include a relative lock time that locks funds for a time relative to its confirmation time. This is called CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY or CSV.
  • Disabled the alert system

0.12.0 - February 23, 2016 - 94 Contributors

  • Upgraded signature validation from OpenSSL to libsecp256k1, making signature validation speed seven times faster, dramatically increasing overall sync speed.
  • Added maxuploadtarget option to allow nodes to limit their upload bandwidth utilization
  • Made pruned nodes able to relay blocks
  • Added maxmempool option to allow notes to limit their memory usage
  • Adjusted nSequence usage in transactions to allow for transactions to be marked as replaceable, allowing fee and target adjustment, also called Opt-in RBF
  • Disabled by default the priority system of favoring some lower fee transactions to be selected for block inclusion
  • Started automatically detecting and using Tor if locally present
  • Added support for ZMQ announcement of transactions and blocks
  • Added historical block data pruning support to the GUI client
  • Added discrete signaling of Bloom filter support to nodes
  • Added support to the JSON RPC API for passing monetary values as Strings

0.11.2 - November 13, 2015

  • Added support for BIP 65 feature OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY or CLTV, which makes funds un-spendable until a future date.

0.11.1 - October 15, 2015

  • Fixed buffer overflow vulnerability in UPNP, back-ported to 0.10.3
  • Reduced transaction malleability problems by strengthening signature standard checking for relaying, back-ported to 0.10.3
  • Increased the minimum relay fee to 0.00005 BTC, back-ported to 0.10.3

0.11.0 - July 12, 2015 - 77 Contributors

  • Added support for pruning to bitcoind, which allows eliminating the large hard drive space usage of bitcoind for users who don't wish to store unnecessary historical data.
  • Improved Tor integration by connecting to peers individually through Tor, hardening against a Tor exit node attack

0.10.3 - October 14, 2015

  • Fixed buffer overflow vulnerability in UPNP
  • Reduced transaction malleability problems by strengthening signature standard checking for relaying
  • Increased the minimum relay fee to 0.00005 BTC

0.10.0 - February 16, 2014 - 100 Contributors

  • Improved initial sync time using headers-first sync, making sync go as quickly as local hardware can process transaction data, given high bandwidth.
  • Started automatically determining fees for transactions based on historical fee data.
  • Added REST HTTP interface
  • Added libsecp256k1 library to replace OpenSSL for signature creation, which improves signature speed and eliminates variation in signature outputs.
  • Began separation of consensus rule code into a packaged library called libconsensus
  • Removed restrictions on relaying P2SH transactions

0.9.2 - June 16, 2014

  • Reduced warning threshold for transactions not including a fee to 0.01 BTC from 0.25 BTC
  • Added Deterministically built OSX version using gitian
  • Added "weeks" label to sync catchup time indicator

0.9.0 - March 19, 2014 - 88 Contributors

  • Rebranded to Bitcoin Core to clarify distinction between the Bitcoin network and the Bitcoin Core project
  • Switched transaction formation to only use low S values to reduce transaction malleability
  • Reduced tolerance in transaction formation to reduce transaction malleability
  • Added command line option -zapwallettxes to reload wallet transaction data
  • Increased block size soft limit to 750k
  • Reduced relay fee to 0.00001 BTC.
  • Added checkpoint block at 279,000
  • Added BIP 70 payment request support and redesign payment request form
  • Started showing transaction fees in send confirmations
  • Added network traffic graph
  • Added support for native OSX notifications, high resolution display on OSX

0.8.6 - December 9, 2013

  • Increased default block soft limit
  • Fixed issues that caused frequent LevelDB block data database corruption issues on OSX

0.8.4 - September 3, 2013

  • Fixed a DoS vulnerability that could exploit Bloom filter functionality added in 0.8 to crash remote nodes.
  • Improved LevelDB on OSX to correct frequent database corruptions suffered on the OSX LevelDB

0.8.2 - May 29, 2013

  • Changed default fees from 0.0005 BTC to 0.0001 BTC
  • Prevented relaying of transactions with outputs lower than 0.00005430 BTC, based on half of the minimum relay fee
  • Removed IRC from network bootstrapping

0.8.1 - March 18, 2013

  • Fixed validation issue deriving from accidental LevelDb block size hard fork with a planned consensus change on May 15, 2013
  • Added block checkpoint at 225,430 to force locking to the correct chain in the March 2013 accidental hard fork that continued for eleven blocks

0.8.0 - February 19, 2013 - 29 Contributors

  • Switched to LevelDB from Berkeley DB for transactions and block data.
  • Parallelized signature checking to improve performance
  • Added Bloom filter querying to assist lightweight non-validating clients.
  • Fixed privacy issue where change outputs were not random

0.7.0 - September 17, 2012

  • Implemented BIP 22 / getblocktemplate to improve mining decentralization
  • Improved CPU efficiency by avoiding re-validating signatures through caching
  • Started prioritizing block space by fees
  • Added block checkpoint at 193,000
  • Added IPv6 support
  • Added Tor support

0.6.3 - June 25, 2012

  • Fixed a DoS vulnerability documented in CVE-2012-3789
  • Added a block checkpoint at 185,333

0.6.0 - March 30, 2012 - 26 Contributors

  • Added preliminary support for Multisig via P2SH transactions

0.5.4

  • Started initial support for P2SH

0.5.3 - March 14, 2012

  • Fixed a DoS vulnerability vector that abused orphan transactions and back-ported the fix to 0.4.4
  • Added a checkpoint at block 168,000 to prevent network miner attack and back-ported the change to 0.4.4

0.5.2 - January 9, 2012

  • Corrected the minimum transaction fee to be 0.0005 BTC and back-ported the fix to 0.4.3
  • Added Luke-Jr and Peter Wuille's DNS seeds to network bootstrapping and back-ported the change to 0.4.3

0.5.0 - November 21, 2011

  • Added an icon to the GUI to reveal network connectivity, a progress bar for blockchain sync status, and a loading screen with a progress indicator for wallet startup.
  • Fixed a bug in the 0.4.0 wallet encryption found by Alan Reiner, which was also back-ported to 0.4.1

0.4.4

  • Fixed a potential DoS vulnerability that could exploit a flood of orphan transactions, or invalid transactions.
  • Added a checkpoint at block 168,000 to prevent network miner attack.

0.4.3

  • Added Luke-Jr and Peter Wuille's DNS seeds to network bootstrapping
  • Corrected an error where the minimum transaction fee was supposed to be 0.0005 BTC but it was accidentally set to 0.0001 BTC.

0.4.1

  • Fixed a bug in the 0.4.0 encryption found by Alan Reiner that meant that the new encryption scheme introduced was not completely secure.

0.4.0 - September 23, 2011

  • Added wallet encryption and a password confirmation step to send bitcoins.

0.3.24 - July 8, 2011

  • Made the DNS method of network discovery the default
  • Made the UPNP method to bypass firewalls the default

0.3.23 - June 14, 2011

  • Reduced the transaction fee to 0.0005 BTC
  • Reduced the relay fee to 0.0001 BTC

0.3.22 - June 5, 2011

  • Changed the relay fee to 0.0005 BTC
  • Removed the mining option from the GUI

0.3.21 - April 27, 2011

  • Added UPNP support to enable peer to peer connectivity behind firewalls.
  • Added support for sending Bitcoin amounts below 0.01 in the GUI, but also added a mandatory 0.01 fee for sending amounts lower than 0.01.
  • Added a new bootstrapping connectivity system using DNS
  • First release from Gavin Andresen

0.3.19 - December 12, 2010

  • Removed safe mode triggering from alerts, which was a temporary measure

Last release from Satoshi Nakamoto

0.3.18 - December 8, 2010

  • Changed nodes to have a whitelist model for verifying transactions

0.3.17 - November 25, 2010

  • Re-enabled transaction fee setting (he disabled it in 0.1.5)
  • Added limits to free transactions

0.3.15 - November 13, 2010

  • Switched transaction fees to be based on size

0.3.14 - October 21, 2010

  • Changed the key generation mechanism to create a pool of keys, to reduce the necessary frequency of backups
  • Added support for testnet, a testing mode with its own network

0.3.13 - October 1, 2010

  • Disabled by default IP address transaction functionality
  • Added an option to allow remote JSON-RPC connections

0.3.12 - September 7, 2010

  • Improved error reporting in the JSON-RPC API