Bitcoin Core 0.19.0.1 Released

Note: A bug was found after 0.19.0 was tagged, so it was not released. 0.19.0.1 contains the bug fix as well as everything 0.19.0 has. It is the 0.19 major release.


Bitcoin Core version 0.19.0.1 is now available from:

https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-0.19.0.1/

or through BitTorrent:

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This release includes new features, various bug fixes 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/

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/Bitcoin-Qt (on Mac)
or bitcoind/bitcoin-qt (on Linux).

Upgrading directly from a version of Bitcoin Core that has reached its EOL is
possible, but might take some time if the datadir needs to be migrated. Old
wallet versions of Bitcoin Core are generally supported.

Compatibility

Bitcoin Core is supported and extensively tested on operating systems using
the Linux kernel, macOS 10.10+, and Windows 7 and newer. It is not recommended
to use Bitcoin Core on unsupported systems.

Bitcoin Core should also work on most other Unix-like systems but is not
as frequently tested on them.

From 0.17.0 onwards, macOS <10.10 is no longer supported. 0.17.0 is
built using Qt 5.9.x, which doesn't support versions of macOS older than
10.10. Additionally, Bitcoin Core does not yet change appearance when
macOS "dark mode" is activated.

Users running macOS Catalina may need to "right-click" and then choose "Open"
to open the Bitcoin Core .dmg. This is due to new signing requirements
imposed by Apple, which the Bitcoin Core project does not yet adhere too.

Notable changes

New user documentation
Reduce memory
suggests configuration tweaks for running Bitcoin Core on systems with
limited memory. (#16339)

New RPCs
getbalances returns an object with all balances (mine,
untrusted_pending and immature). Please refer to the RPC help of
getbalances for details. The new RPC is intended to replace
getbalance, getunconfirmedbalance, and the balance fields in
getwalletinfo. These old calls and fields may be removed in a
future version. (#15930, #16239)
setwalletflag sets and unsets wallet flags that enable or disable
features specific to that existing wallet, such as the new
avoid_reuse feature documented elsewhere in these release notes.
(#13756)
getblockfilter gets the BIP158 filter for the specified block. This
RPC is only enabled if block filters have been created using the
-blockfilterindex configuration option. (#14121)

New settings
-blockfilterindex enables the creation of BIP158 block filters for
the entire blockchain. Filters will be created in the background and
currently use about 4 GiB of space. Note: this version of Bitcoin
Core does not serve block filters over the P2P network, although the
local user may obtain block filters using the getblockfilter RPC.
(#14121)

Updated settings
whitebind and whitelist now accept a list of permissions to
provide peers connecting using the indicated interfaces or IP
addresses. If no permissions are specified with an address or CIDR
network, the implicit default permissions are the same as previous
releases. See the bitcoind -help output for these two options for
details about the available permissions. (#16248)
Users setting custom dbcache values can increase their setting slightly
without using any more real memory. Recent changes reduced the memory use
by about 9% and made chainstate accounting more accurate (it was underestimating
the use of memory before). For example, if you set a value of "450" before, you
may now set a value of "500" to use about the same real amount of memory. (#16957)

Updated RPCs

Note: some low-level RPC changes mainly useful for testing are described in the
Low-level Changes section below.
sendmany no longer has a minconf argument. This argument was not
well-specified and would lead to RPC errors even when the wallet's
coin selection succeeded. Users who want to influence coin selection
can use the existing -spendzeroconfchange, -limitancestorcount,
-limitdescendantcount and -walletrejectlongchains configuration
arguments. (#15596)
getbalance and sendtoaddress, plus the new RPCs getbalances and
createwallet, now accept an "avoid_reuse" parameter that controls
whether already used addresses should be included in the operation.
Additionally, sendtoaddress will avoid partial spends when
avoid_reuse is enabled even if this feature is not already enabled
via the -avoidpartialspends command line flag because not doing so
would risk using up the "wrong" UTXO for an address reuse case.
(#13756)
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. (#16383)
listunspent now returns a "reused" bool for each output if the
wallet flag "avoid_reuse" is enabled. (#13756)
getblockstats now uses BlockUndo data instead of the transaction
index, making it much faster, no longer dependent on the -txindex
configuration option, and functional for all non-pruned blocks.
(#14802)
utxoupdatepsbt now accepts a descriptors parameter that will fill
out input and output scripts and keys when known. P2SH-witness inputs
will be filled in from the UTXO set when a descriptor is provided that
shows they're spending segwit outputs. See the RPC help text for full
details. (#15427)
sendrawtransaction and testmempoolaccept no longer accept a
allowhighfees parameter to fail mempool acceptance if the
transaction fee exceeds the value of the configuration option
-maxtxfee. Now there is a hardcoded default maximum feerate that
can be changed when calling either RPC using a maxfeerate parameter.
(#15620)
getmempoolancestors, getmempooldescendants, getmempoolentry, and
getrawmempool no longer return a size field unless the
configuration option -deprecatedrpc=size is used. Instead a new
vsize field is returned with the transaction's virtual size
(consistent with other RPCs such as getrawtransaction). (#15637)
getwalletinfo now includes a scanning field that is either false
(no scanning) or an object with information about the duration and
progress of the wallet's scanning historical blocks for transactions
affecting its balances. (#15730)
gettransaction now accepts a third (boolean) argument verbose. If
set to true, a new decoded field will be added to the response containing
the decoded transaction. This field is equivalent to RPC decoderawtransaction,
or RPC getrawtransaction when verbose is passed. (#16185, #16866, #16873)
createwallet accepts a new passphrase parameter. If set, this
will create the new wallet encrypted with the given passphrase. If
unset (the default) or set to an empty string, no encryption will be
used. (#16394)
getchaintxstats RPC now returns the additional key of
window_final_block_height. (#16695)
getmempoolentry now provides a weight field containing the
transaction weight as defined in BIP141. (#16647)
The getnetworkinfo and getpeerinfo commands now contain a new field with decoded network service flags. (#16786)
getdescriptorinfo now returns an additional checksum field
containing the checksum for the unmodified descriptor provided by the
user (that is, before the descriptor is normalized for the
descriptor field). (#15986)
joinpsbts now shuffles the order of the inputs and outputs of the resulting
joined PSBT. Previously, inputs and outputs were added in the order PSBTs were
provided. This made it easy to correlate inputs to outputs, representing a
privacy leak. (#16512)
walletcreatefundedpsbt now signals BIP125 Replace-by-Fee if the
-walletrbf configuration option is set to true. (#15911)

GUI changes
The GUI wallet now provides bech32 addresses by default. The user may change the address type
during invoice generation using a GUI toggle, or the default address
type may be changed with the -addresstype configuration option.
(#15711, #16497)
In 0.18.0, a ./configure flag was introduced to allow disabling BIP70 support in the GUI (support was enabled by default). In 0.19.0, this flag is now <strong>disabled</strong> by default. If you want to compile Bitcoin Core with BIP70 support in the GUI, you can pass --enable-bip70 to ./configure. (#15584)

Deprecated or removed configuration options
-mempoolreplacement is removed, although default node behavior
remains the same. This option previously allowed the user to prevent
the node from accepting or relaying BIP125 transaction replacements.
This is different from the remaining configuration option
-walletrbf. (#16171)

Deprecated or removed RPCs
bumpfee no longer accepts a totalFee option unless the
configuration parameter deprecatedrpc=totalFee is specified. This
parameter will be fully removed in a subsequent release. (#15996)
bumpfee has a new fee_rate option as a replacement for the deprecated totalFee. (#16727)
generate is now removed after being deprecated in Bitcoin Core 0.18.
Use the generatetoaddress RPC instead. (#15492)

P2P changes
BIP 61 reject messages were deprecated in v0.18. They are now disabled
by default, but can be enabled by setting the -enablebip61 command
line option. BIP 61 reject messages will be removed entirely in a
future version of Bitcoin Core. (#14054)
To eliminate well-known denial-of-service vectors in Bitcoin Core,
especially for nodes with spinning disks, the default value for the
-peerbloomfilters configuration option has been changed to false.
This prevents Bitcoin Core from sending the BIP111 NODE_BLOOM service
flag, accepting BIP37 bloom filters, or serving merkle blocks or
transactions matching a bloom filter. Users who still want to provide
bloom filter support may either set the configuration option to true
to re-enable both BIP111 and BIP37 support or enable just BIP37
support for specific peers using the updated -whitelist and
-whitebind configuration options described elsewhere in these
release notes. For the near future, lightweight clients using public
BIP111/BIP37 nodes should still be able to connect to older versions
of Bitcoin Core and nodes that have manually enabled BIP37 support,
but developers of such software should consider migrating to either
using specific BIP37 nodes or an alternative transaction filtering
system. (#16152)
By default, Bitcoin Core will now make two additional outbound connections that are exclusively used for block-relay. No transactions or addr messages will be processed on these connections. These connections are designed to add little additional memory or bandwidth resource requirements but should make some partitioning attacks more difficult to carry out. (#15759)

Miscellaneous CLI Changes
The testnet field in bitcoin-cli -getinfo has been renamed to
chain and now returns the current network name as defined in BIP70
(main, test, regtest). (#15566)

Low-level changes

RPC
getblockchaininfo no longer returns a bip9_softforks object.
Instead, information has been moved into the softforks object and
an additional type field describes how Bitcoin Core determines
whether that soft fork is active (e.g. BIP9 or BIP90). See the RPC
help for details. (#16060)
getblocktemplate no longer returns a rules array containing CSV
and segwit (the BIP9 deployments that are currently in active
state). (#16060)
getrpcinfo now returns a logpath field with the path to
debug.log. (#15483)

Tests
The regression test chain enabled by the -regtest command line flag
now requires transactions to not violate standard policy by default.
This is the same default used for mainnet and makes it easier to test
mainnet behavior on regtest. Note that the testnet still allows
non-standard txs by default and that the policy can be locally
adjusted with the -acceptnonstdtxn command line flag for both test
chains. (#15891)

Configuration
A setting specified in the default section but not also specified in a
network-specific section (e.g. testnet) will now produce an error
preventing startup instead of just a warning unless the network is
mainnet. This prevents settings intended for mainnet from being
applied to testnet or regtest. (#15629)
On platforms supporting thread_local, log lines can be prefixed with
the name of the thread that caused the log. To enable this behavior,
use -logthreadnames=1. (#15849)

Network
When fetching a transaction announced by multiple peers, previous versions of
Bitcoin Core would sequentially attempt to download the transaction from each
announcing peer until the transaction is received, in the order that those
peers' announcements were received. In this release, the download logic has
changed to randomize the fetch order across peers and to prefer sending
download requests to outbound peers over inbound peers. This fixes an issue
where inbound peers could prevent a node from getting a transaction.
(#14897, #15834)
If a Tor hidden service is being used, Bitcoin Core will be bound to
the standard port 8333 even if a different port is configured for
clearnet connections. This prevents leaking node identity through use
of identical non-default port numbers. (#15651)

Mempool and transaction relay
Allows one extra single-ancestor transaction per package. Previously,
if a transaction in the mempool had 25 descendants, or it and all of
its descendants were over 101,000 vbytes, any newly-received
transaction that was also a descendant would be ignored. Now, one
extra descendant will be allowed provided it is an immediate
descendant (child) and the child's size is 10,000 vbytes or less.
This makes it possible for two-party contract protocols such as
Lightning Network to give each participant an output they can spend
immediately for Child-Pays-For-Parent (CPFP) fee bumping without
allowing one malicious participant to fill the entire package and thus
prevent the other participant from spending their output. (#15681)
Transactions with outputs paying v1 to v16 witness versions (future
segwit versions) are now accepted into the mempool, relayed, and
mined. Attempting to spend those outputs remains forbidden by policy
("non-standard"). When this change has been widely deployed, wallets
and services can accept any valid bech32 Bitcoin address without
concern that transactions paying future segwit versions will become
stuck in an unconfirmed state. (#15846)
Legacy transactions (transactions with no segwit inputs) must now be
sent using the legacy encoding format, enforcing the rule specified in
BIP144. (#14039)

Wallet
When in pruned mode, a rescan that was triggered by an importwallet,
importpubkey, importaddress, or importprivkey RPC will only fail
when blocks have been pruned. Previously it would fail when -prune
has been set. This change allows setting -prune to a high value
(e.g. the disk size) without the calls to any of the import RPCs
failing until the first block is pruned. (#15870)
When creating a transaction with a fee above -maxtxfee (default 0.1
BTC), the RPC commands walletcreatefundedpsbt and
fundrawtransaction will now fail instead of rounding down the fee.
Be aware that the feeRate argument is specified in BTC per 1,000
vbytes, not satoshi per vbyte. (#16257)
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. When setting
this flag on an existing wallet, rescanning the blockchain is required
to correctly mark previously used destinations. Together with "avoid
partial spends" (added in Bitcoin Core v0.17.0), this can eliminate a
serious privacy issue where a malicious user can track spends by
sending small payments to a previously-paid address that would then
be included with unrelated inputs in future payments. (#13756)

Build system changes
Python &gt;=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. (#14954)
The minimum supported miniUPnPc API version is set to 10. This keeps
compatibility with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Debian 8 libminiupnpc-dev
packages. Please note, on Debian this package is still vulnerable to
CVE-2017-8798
(in jessie only) and
CVE-2017-1000494
(both in jessie and in stretch). (#15993)