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dcrd v1.2.0
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@davecgh davecgh released this 27 May 12:26
· 3187 commits to master since this release
release-v1.2.0
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davecgh Dave Collins
GPG key ID: B8904D9D9C93D1F2
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This release of dcrd contains significant performance enhancements,
infrastructure improvements, improved access to chain-related information for
providing better SPV (Simplified Payment Verification) support, and other
quality assurance changes.

A significant amount of infrastructure work has also been done this release
cycle towards being able to support several planned scalability optimizations.

Downgrade Warning

The database format in v1.2.0 is not compatible with previous versions of the
software. This only affects downgrades as users upgrading from previous
versions will see a one time database migration.

Once this migration has been completed, it will no longer be possible to
downgrade to a previous version of the software without having to delete the
database and redownload the chain.

Notable Changes

Significantly Faster Startup

The startup time has been improved by roughly 17x on slower hard disk drives
(HDDs) and 8x on solid state drives (SSDs).

In order to achieve these speedups, there is a one time database migration, as
previously mentioned, that will likely take a while to complete (typically
around 5 to 6 minutes on HDDs and 2 to 3 minutes on SSDs).

Support For DNS Seed Filtering

In order to better support the forthcoming SPV wallets, support for finding
other peers based upon their enabled services has been added. This is useful
for both SPV wallets and full nodes since SPV wallets will require access to
full nodes in order to retrieve the necessary proofs and full nodes are
generally not interested in making outgoing connections to SPV wallets.

Committed Filters

With the intention of supporting light clients, such as SPV wallets, in a
privacy-preserving way while still minimizing the amount of data that needs to
be downloaded, this release adds support for committed filters. A committed
filter is a combination of a probalistic data structure that is used to test
whether an element is a member of a set with a predetermined collision
probability along with a commitment by consensus-validating full nodes to that
data.

A committed filter is created for every block which allows light clients to
download the filters and match against them locally rather than uploading
personal data to other nodes.

A new service flag is also provided to allow clients to discover nodes that
provide access to filters.

There is a one time database update to build and store the filters for all
existing historical blocks which will likely take a while to complete (typically
around 2 to 3 minutes on HDDs and 1 to 1.5 minutes on SSDs).

Updated Atomic Swap Contracts

The standard checks for atomic swap contracts have been updated to ensure the
contracts enforce the secret size for safer support between chains with
disparate script rules.

RPC Server Changes

New getchaintips RPC

A new RPC named getchaintips has been added which allows callers to query
information about the status of known side chains and their branch lengths.
It currently only provides support for side chains that have been seen while the
current instance of the process is running. This will be further improved in
future releases.

Changelog

All commits since the last release may be viewed on GitHub here.

Protocol and network:

Transaction relay (memory pool):

RPC:

dcrd command-line flags and configuration:

checkdevpremine utility changes:

Documentation:

Developer-related package changes:

Testing and Quality Assurance:

Misc:

Code Contributors (alphabetical order):

  • Andrew Chiw
  • Daniel Krawsiz
  • Dave Collins
  • David Hill
  • Donald Adu-Poku
  • Javed Khan
  • Jolan Luff
  • Jon Gillham
  • Josh Rickmar
  • Markus Richter
  • Matheus Degiovani
  • Ryan Vacek
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