dogecoin/doc/release-notes.md

Dogecoin Core version 1.14.2 is now available from:

https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/releases/tag/v1.14.2/

This is a new major version release, including new features, various bugfixes and performance improvements, as well as updated translations.

Please report bugs using the issue tracker at github:

https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/issues

To receive security and update notifications, please watch reddit or Twitter:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/
• @Dogecoin on Twitter for high priority announcements
• @dogecoin_devs on Twitter for updates on development work

The developers also maintain personal Twitter accounts:

• @langer_hans
• @JRossNicoll

Lastly the founders are on Twitter, although as of the time of writing not involved in maintaining Dogecoin:

• @ummjackson
• @BillyM2k

Compatibility

Dogecoin Core is extensively tested on Ubuntu Server LTS, Mac OS X and Windows 10.

Microsoft ended support for Windows XP on April 8th, 2014, No attempt is made to prevent installing or running the software on Windows XP, you can still do so at your own risk but be aware that there are known instabilities and issues. Please do not report issues about Windows XP to the issue tracker.

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

Notable changes

Low-level RPC changes

• Error codes have been updated to be more accurate for the following error cases:
  • getblock now returns RPC_MISC_ERROR if the block can't be found on disk (for example if the block has been pruned). Previously returned RPC_INTERNAL_ERROR.
  • pruneblockchain now returns RPC_MISC_ERROR if the blocks cannot be pruned because the node is not in pruned mode. Previously returned RPC_METHOD_NOT_FOUND.
  • pruneblockchain now returns RPC_INVALID_PARAMETER if the blocks cannot be pruned because the supplied timestamp is too late. Previously returned RPC_INTERNAL_ERROR.
  • pruneblockchain now returns RPC_MISC_ERROR if the blocks cannot be pruned because the blockchain is too short. Previously returned RPC_INTERNAL_ERROR.
  • setban now returns RPC_CLIENT_INVALID_IP_OR_SUBNET if the supplied IP address or subnet is invalid. Previously returned RPC_CLIENT_NODE_ALREADY_ADDED.
  • setban now returns RPC_CLIENT_INVALID_IP_OR_SUBNET if the user tries to unban a node that has not previously been banned. Previously returned RPC_MISC_ERROR.
  • removeprunedfunds now returns RPC_WALLET_ERROR if bitcoind is unable to remove the transaction. Previously returned RPC_INTERNAL_ERROR.
  • removeprunedfunds now returns RPC_INVALID_PARAMETER if the transaction does not exist in the wallet. Previously returned RPC_INTERNAL_ERROR.
  • fundrawtransaction now returns RPC_INVALID_ADDRESS_OR_KEY if an invalid change address is provided. Previously returned RPC_INVALID_PARAMETER.
  • fundrawtransaction now returns RPC_WALLET_ERROR if bitcoind is unable to create the transaction. The error message provides further details. Previously returned RPC_INTERNAL_ERROR.
  • bumpfee now returns RPC_INVALID_PARAMETER if the provided transaction has descendants in the wallet. Previously returned RPC_MISC_ERROR.
  • bumpfee now returns RPC_INVALID_PARAMETER if the provided transaction has descendants in the mempool. Previously returned RPC_MISC_ERROR.
  • bumpfee now returns RPC_WALLET_ERROR if the provided transaction has has been mined or conflicts with a mined transaction. Previously returned RPC_INVALID_ADDRESS_OR_KEY.
  • bumpfee now returns RPC_WALLET_ERROR if the provided transaction is not BIP 125 replaceable. Previously returned RPC_INVALID_ADDRESS_OR_KEY.
  • bumpfee now returns RPC_WALLET_ERROR if the provided transaction has already been bumped by a different transaction. Previously returned RPC_INVALID_REQUEST.
  • bumpfee now returns RPC_WALLET_ERROR if the provided transaction contains inputs which don't belong to this wallet. Previously returned RPC_INVALID_ADDRESS_OR_KEY.
  • bumpfee now returns RPC_WALLET_ERROR if the provided transaction has multiple change outputs. Previously returned RPC_MISC_ERROR.
  • bumpfee now returns RPC_WALLET_ERROR if the provided transaction has no change output. Previously returned RPC_MISC_ERROR.
  • bumpfee now returns RPC_WALLET_ERROR if the fee is too high. Previously returned RPC_MISC_ERROR.
  • bumpfee now returns RPC_WALLET_ERROR if the fee is too low. Previously returned RPC_MISC_ERROR.
  • bumpfee now returns RPC_WALLET_ERROR if the change output is too small to bump the fee. Previously returned RPC_MISC_ERROR.

miniupnp CVE-2017-8798

Bundled miniupnpc was updated to 2.0.20170509. This fixes an integer signedness error (present in MiniUPnPc v1.4.20101221 through v2.0) that allows remote attackers (within the LAN) to cause a denial of service or possibly have unspecified other impact.

Performance Improvements

Validation speed and network propagation performance have been greatly improved, leading to much shorter sync and initial block download times.

• The script signature cache has been reimplemented as a "cuckoo cache", allowing for more signatures to be cached and faster lookups.
• Assumed-valid blocks have been introduced which allows script validation to be skipped for ancestors of known-good blocks, without changing the security model. See below for more details.
• In some cases, compact blocks are now relayed before being fully validated as per BIP152.
• P2P networking has been refactored with a focus on concurrency and throughput. Network operations are no longer bottlenecked by validation. As a result, block fetching is several times faster than previous releases in many cases.
• The UTXO cache now claims unused mempool memory. This speeds up initial block download as UTXO lookups are a major bottleneck there, and there is no use for the mempool at that stage.

Manual Pruning

Dogecoin Core introduces pruning the blockchain in 1.14. Pruning the blockchain allows for significant storage space savings as the vast majority of the downloaded data can be discarded after processing so very little of it remains on the disk.

Manual block pruning can now be enabled by setting -prune=1. Once that is set, the RPC command pruneblockchain can be used to prune the blockchain up to the specified height or timestamp.

getinfo Deprecated

The getinfo RPC command has been deprecated. Each field in the RPC call has been moved to another command's output with that command also giving additional information that getinfo did not provide. The following table shows where each field has been moved to:

getinfo field	Moved to
"version"	getnetworkinfo()["version"]
"protocolversion"	getnetworkinfo()["protocolversion"]
"walletversion"	getwalletinfo()["walletversion"]
"balance"	getwalletinfo()["balance"]
"blocks"	getblockchaininfo()["blocks"]
"timeoffset"	getnetworkinfo()["timeoffset"]
"connections"	getnetworkinfo()["connections"]
"proxy"	getnetworkinfo()["networks"][0]["proxy"]
"difficulty"	getblockchaininfo()["difficulty"]
"testnet"	getblockchaininfo()["chain"] == "test"
"keypoololdest"	getwalletinfo()["keypoololdest"]
"keypoolsize"	getwalletinfo()["keypoolsize"]
"unlocked_until"	getwalletinfo()["unlocked_until"]
"paytxfee"	getwalletinfo()["paytxfee"]
"relayfee"	getnetworkinfo()["relayfee"]
"errors"	getnetworkinfo()["warnings"]

ZMQ On Windows

Previously the ZeroMQ notification system was unavailable on Windows due to various issues with ZMQ. These have been fixed upstream and now ZMQ can be used on Windows. Please see this document for help with using ZMQ in general.

Nested RPC Commands in Debug Console

The ability to nest RPC commands has been added to the debug console. This allows users to have the output of a command become the input to another command without running the commands separately.

The nested RPC commands use bracket syntax (i.e. getwalletinfo()) and can be nested (i.e. getblock(getblockhash(1))). Simple queries can be done with square brackets where object values are accessed with either an array index or a non-quoted string (i.e. listunspent()[0][txid]). Both commas and spaces can be used to separate parameters in both the bracket syntax and normal RPC command syntax.

Network Activity Toggle

A RPC command and GUI toggle have been added to enable or disable all p2p network activity. The network status icon in the bottom right hand corner is now the GUI toggle. Clicking the icon will either enable or disable all p2p network activity. If network activity is disabled, the icon will be grayed out with an X on top of it.

Additionally the setnetworkactive RPC command has been added which does the same thing as the GUI icon. The command takes one boolean parameter, true enables networking and false disables it.

Out-of-sync Modal Info Layer

When Dogecoin Core is out-of-sync on startup, a semi-transparent information layer will be shown over top of the normal display. This layer contains details about the current sync progress and estimates the amount of time remaining to finish syncing. This layer can also be hidden and subsequently unhidden by clicking on the progress bar at the bottom of the window.

Support for JSON-RPC Named Arguments

Commands sent over the JSON-RPC interface and through the bitcoin-cli binary can now use named arguments. This follows the JSON-RPC specification for passing parameters by-name with an object.

bitcoin-cli has been updated to support this by parsing name=value arguments when the -named option is given.

Some examples:

src/bitcoin-cli -named help command="help"
src/bitcoin-cli -named getblockhash height=0
src/bitcoin-cli -named getblock blockhash=000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f
src/bitcoin-cli -named sendtoaddress address="(snip)" amount="1.0" subtractfeefromamount=true

The order of arguments doesn't matter in this case. Named arguments are also useful to leave out arguments that should stay at their default value. The rarely-used arguments comment and comment_to to sendtoaddress, for example, can be left out. However, this is not yet implemented for many RPC calls, this is expected to land in a later release.

The RPC server remains fully backwards compatible with positional arguments.

Opt into RBF When Sending

A new startup option, -walletrbf, has been added to allow users to have all transactions sent opt into RBF support. The default value for this option is currently false, so transactions will not opt into RBF by default. The new bumpfee RPC can be used to replace transactions that opt into RBF.

Sensitive Data Is No Longer Stored In Debug Console History

This only affects users that have explicitly enabled UPnP through the GUI setting or through the -upnp option, as since the last UPnP vulnerability (in Bitcoin Core 0.10.3) it has been disabled by default.

If you use this option, it is recommended to upgrade to this version as soon as possible.

Known Bugs

Since 1.14.0 the approximate transaction fee shown in Dogecoin-Qt when using coin control and smart fee estimation does not reflect any change in target from the smart fee slider. It will only present an approximate fee calculated using the default target. The fee calculated using the correct target is still applied to the transaction and shown in the final send confirmation dialog.

1.14.0 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.

RPC and other APIs

• #10410 321419b Fix importwallet edge case rescan bug (ryanofsky)

P2P protocol and network code

• #10424 37a8fc5 Populate services in GetLocalAddress (morcos)
• #10441 9e3ad50 Only enforce expected services for half of outgoing connections (theuni)

Build system

• #10414 ffb0c4b miniupnpc 2.0.20170509 (fanquake)
• #10228 ae479bc Regenerate bitcoin-config.h as necessary (theuni)

Miscellaneous

• #10245 44a17f2 Minor fix in build documentation for FreeBSD 11 (shigeya)
• #10215 0aee4a1 Check interruptNet during dnsseed lookups (TheBlueMatt)

GUI

• #10231 1e936d7 Reduce a significant cs_main lock freeze (jonasschnelli)

Wallet

• #10294 1847642 Unset change position when there is no change (instagibbs)

GUI Changes

• After resetting the options by clicking the Reset Options button in the options dialog or with the -resetguioptions startup option, the user will be prompted to choose the data directory again. This is to ensure that custom data directories will be kept after the option reset which clears the custom data directory set via the choose datadir dialog.

• Multiple peers can now be selected in the list of peers in the debug window. This allows for users to ban or disconnect multiple peers simultaneously instead of banning them one at a time.

• An indicator has been added to the bottom right hand corner of the main window to indicate whether the wallet being used is a HD wallet. This icon will be grayed out with an X on top of it if the wallet is not a HD wallet.

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.

• The first boolean argument to getaddednodeinfo has been removed. This is an incompatible change.

• RPC command getmininginfo loses the "testnet" field in favor of the more generic "chain" (which has been present for years).

• A new RPC command preciousblock has been added which marks a block as precious. A precious block will be treated as if it were received earlier than a competing block.

• A new RPC command importmulti has been added which receives an array of JSON objects representing the intention of importing a public key, a private key, an address and script/p2sh

• Use of getrawtransaction for retrieving confirmed transactions with unspent outputs has been deprecated. For now this will still work, but in the future it may change to only be able to retrieve information about transactions in the mempool or if txindex is enabled.

• A new RPC command getmemoryinfo has been added which will return information about the memory usage of Dogecoin Core. This was added in conjunction with optimizations to memory management. See Pull #8753 for more information.

• A new RPC command bumpfee has been added which allows replacing an unconfirmed wallet transaction that signaled RBF (see the -walletrbf startup option above) with a new transaction that pays a higher fee, and should be more likely to get confirmed quickly.

HTTP REST Changes

• UTXO set query (GET /rest/getutxos/<checkmempool>/<txid>-<n>/<txid>-<n> /.../<txid>-<n>.<bin|hex|json>) responses were changed to return status code HTTP_BAD_REQUEST (400) instead of HTTP_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR (500) when requests contain invalid parameters.

Fee Estimation Changes

• Fee estimation for a confirmation target of 1 block has been disabled. The fee slider will no longer be able to choose a target of 1 block. This is only a minor behavior change as there was often insufficient data for this target anyway. estimatefee 1 will now always return -1 and estimatesmartfee 1 will start searching at a target of 2.

• The default target for fee estimation is changed to 6 blocks in both the GUI (previously 25) and for RPC calls (previously 2).

Removal of Priority Estimation

• Estimation of "priority" needed for a transaction to be included within a target number of blocks has been removed. The RPC calls are deprecated and will either return -1 or 1e24 appropriately. The format for fee_estimates.dat has also changed to no longer save these priority estimates. It will automatically be converted to the new format which is not readable by prior versions of the software.

• Support for "priority" (coin age) transaction sorting for mining is considered deprecated in Core and will be removed in the next major version. This is not to be confused with the prioritisetransaction RPC which will remain supported by Core for adding fee deltas to transactions.

P2P connection management

• Peers manually added through the -addnode option or addnode RPC now have their own limit of eight connections which does not compete with other inbound or outbound connection usage and is not subject to the limitation imposed by the -maxconnections option.

• New connections to manually added peers are performed more quickly.

Introduction of assumed-valid blocks

• A significant portion of the initial block download time is spent verifying scripts/signatures. Although the verification must pass to ensure the security of the system, no other result from this verification is needed: If the node knew the history of a given block were valid it could skip checking scripts for its ancestors.

• A new configuration option 'assumevalid' is provided to express this knowledge to the software. Unlike the 'checkpoints' in the past this setting does not force the use of a particular chain: chains that are consistent with it are processed quicker, but other chains are still accepted if they'd otherwise be chosen as best. Also unlike 'checkpoints' the user can configure which block history is assumed true, this means that even outdated software can sync more quickly if the setting is updated by the user.

• Because the validity of a chain history is a simple objective fact it is much easier to review this setting. As a result the software ships with a default value adjusted to match the current chain shortly before release. The use of this default value can be disabled by setting -assumevalid=0

Fundrawtransaction change address reuse

• Before 1.14, fundrawtransaction was by default wallet stateless. In almost all cases fundrawtransaction does add a change-output to the outputs of the funded transaction. Before 1.14, the used keypool key was never marked as change-address key and directly returned to the keypool (leading to address reuse). Before 1.14, calling getnewaddress directly after fundrawtransaction did generate the same address as the change-output address.

• Since 0.14, fundrawtransaction does reserve the change-output-key from the keypool by default (optional by setting reserveChangeKey, default = true)

• Users should also consider using getrawchangeaddress() in conjunction with fundrawtransaction's changeAddress option.

Unused mempool memory used by coincache

• Before 1.14, memory reserved for mempool (using the -maxmempool option) went unused during initial block download, or IBD. In 0.14, the UTXO DB cache (controlled with the -dbcache option) borrows memory from the mempool when there is extra memory available. This may result in an increase in memory usage during IBD for those previously relying on only the -dbcache option to limit memory during that time.

Update release notes for 1.14 (#1464)

Credits

Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:

• Alex Morcos
• Cory Fields
• fanquake
• Gregory Sanders
• Jonas Schnelli
• Matt Corallo
• Matthew King
• matthias
• Max Keller
• Micha
• Michael Ford
• Michael Rotarius
• Mitchell Cash
• mrbandrews
• mruddy
• Nicolas DORIER
• nomnombtc
• Patrick Lodder
• Patrick Strateman
• Pavel Janík
• Pedro Branco
• Peter Todd
• Pieter Wuille
• poole_party
• practicalswift
• R E Broadley
• randy-waterhouse
• Richard Kiss
• Robert McLaughlin
• rodasmith
• Ross Nicoll
• Russell Yanofsky
• Shigeya Suzuki
• Wladimir J. van der Laan

As well as everyone that helped translating on Transifex.