👉 Bitcoin Core 23.0 released

  • P2P and network changes
  • Fee estimation changes
  • Rescan startup parameter removed
  • Tracepoints and Userspace, Statically Defined Tracing support
23.0 change log
===============

A detailed list of changes in this version follows. To keep the list to a manageable length, small refactors and typo fixes are not included, and similar changes are sometimes condensed into one line.

Notable changes
===============

P2P and network changes
-----------------------

- A bitcoind node will no longer rumour addresses to inbound peers by default.
  They will become eligible for address gossip after sending an ADDR, ADDRV2,
  or GETADDR message. (#21528)

- Before this release, Bitcoin Core had a strong preference to try to connect only to peers that listen on port 8333. As a result of that, Bitcoin nodes listening on non-standard ports would likely not get any Bitcoin Core peers connecting to them. This preference has been removed. (#23542)

- Full support has been added for the CJDNS network. See the new option `-cjdnsreachable` and [doc/cjdns.md](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tree/23.x/doc/cjdns.md) (#23077)

Fee estimation changes
----------------------

- Fee estimation now takes the feerate of replacement (RBF) transactions into
  account. (#22539)

Rescan startup parameter removed
--------------------------------

The `-rescan` startup parameter has been removed. Wallets which require
rescanning due to corruption will still be rescanned on startup.
Otherwise, please use the `rescanblockchain` RPC to trigger a rescan. (#23123)

Tracepoints and Userspace, Statically Defined Tracing support
-------------------------------------------------------------

Bitcoin Core release binaries for Linux now include experimental tracepoints which
act as an interface for process-internal events. These can be used for review,
debugging, monitoring, and more. The tracepoint API is semi-stable. While the API
is tested, process internals might change between releases requiring changes to the
tracepoints. Information about the existing tracepoints can be found under
[doc/tracing.md](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/23.x/doc/tracing.md) and
usage examples are provided in [contrib/tracing/](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tree/23.x/contrib/tracing).

Updated RPCs
------------

- The `validateaddress` RPC now returns an `error_locations` array for invalid
  addresses, with the indices of invalid character locations in the address (if
  known). For example, this will attempt to locate up to two Bech32 errors, and
  return their locations if successful. Success and correctness are only guaranteed
  if fewer than two substitution errors have been made.
  The error message returned in the `error` field now also returns more specific
  errors when decoding fails. (#16807)

- The `-deprecatedrpc=addresses` configuration option has been removed.  RPCs
  `gettxout`, `getrawtransaction`, `decoderawtransaction`, `decodescript`,
  `gettransaction verbose=true` and REST endpoints `/rest/tx`, `/rest/getutxos`,
  `/rest/block` no longer return the `addresses` and `reqSigs` fields, which
  were previously deprecated in 22.0. (#22650)
- The `getblock` RPC command now supports verbosity level 3 containing transaction inputs'
  `prevout` information.  The existing `/rest/block/` REST endpoint is modified to contain
  this information too. Every `vin` field will contain an additional `prevout` subfield
  describing the spent output. `prevout` contains the following keys:
  - `generated` - true if the spent coins was a coinbase.
  - `height`
  - `value`
  - `scriptPubKey`

- The top-level fee fields `fee`, `modifiedfee`, `ancestorfees` and `descendantfees`
  returned by RPCs `getmempoolentry`,`getrawmempool(verbose=true)`,
  `getmempoolancestors(verbose=true)` and `getmempooldescendants(verbose=true)`
  are deprecated and will be removed in the next major version (use
  `-deprecated=fees` if needed in this version). The same fee fields can be accessed
  through the `fees` object in the result. WARNING: deprecated
  fields `ancestorfees` and `descendantfees` are denominated in sats, whereas all
  fields in the `fees` object are denominated in BTC. (#22689)

- Both `createmultisig` and `addmultisigaddress` now include a `warnings`
  field, which will show a warning if a non-legacy address type is requested
  when using uncompressed public keys. (#23113)

Changes to wallet related RPCs can be found in the Wallet section below.

New RPCs
--------

- Information on soft fork status has been moved from `getblockchaininfo`
  to the new `getdeploymentinfo` RPC which allows querying soft fork status at any
  block, rather than just at the chain tip. Inclusion of soft fork
  status in `getblockchaininfo` can currently be restored using the
  configuration `-deprecatedrpc=softforks`, but this will be removed in
  a future release. Note that in either case, the `status` field
  now reflects the status of the current block rather than the next
  block. (#23508)

Files
-----

* On startup, the list of banned hosts and networks (via `setban` RPC) in
  `banlist.dat` is ignored and only `banlist.json` is considered. Bitcoin Core
  version 22.x is the only version that can read `banlist.dat` and also write
  it to `banlist.json`. If `banlist.json` already exists, version 22.x will not
  try to translate the `banlist.dat` into json. After an upgrade, `listbanned`
  can be used to double check the parsed entries. (#22570)

Updated settings
----------------

- In previous releases, the meaning of the command line option
  `-persistmempool` (without a value provided) incorrectly disabled mempool
  persistence.  `-persistmempool` is now treated like other boolean options to
  mean `-persistmempool=1`. Passing `-persistmempool=0`, `-persistmempool=1`
  and `-nopersistmempool` is unaffected. (#23061)

- `-maxuploadtarget` now allows human readable byte units [k|K|m|M|g|G|t|T].
  E.g. `-maxuploadtarget=500g`. No whitespace, +- or fractions allowed.
  Default is `M` if no suffix provided. (#23249)

- If `-proxy=` is given together with `-noonion` then the provided proxy will
  not be set as a proxy for reaching the Tor network. So it will not be
  possible to open manual connections to the Tor network for example with the
  `addnode` RPC. To mimic the old behavior use `-proxy=` together with
  `-onlynet=` listing all relevant networks except `onion`. (#22834)

Tools and Utilities
-------------------

- Update `-getinfo` to return data in a user-friendly format that also reduces vertical space. (#21832)

- CLI `-addrinfo` now returns a single field for the number of `onion` addresses
  known to the node instead of separate `torv2` and `torv3` fields, as support
  for Tor V2 addresses was removed from Bitcoin Core in 22.0. (#22544)

Wallet
------

- Descriptor wallets are now the default wallet type. Newly created wallets
  will use descriptors unless `descriptors=false` is set during `createwallet`, or
  the `Descriptor wallet` checkbox is unchecked in the GUI.

  Note that wallet RPC commands like `importmulti` and `dumpprivkey` cannot be
  used with descriptor wallets, so if your client code relies on these commands
  without specifying `descriptors=false` during wallet creation, you will need
  to update your code.

- Newly created descriptor wallets will contain an automatically generated `tr()`
  descriptor which allows for creating single key Taproot receiving addresses.

- `upgradewallet` will now automatically flush the keypool if upgrading
  from a non-HD wallet to an HD wallet, to immediately start using the
  newly-generated HD keys. (#23093)

- a new RPC `newkeypool` has been added, which will flush (entirely
  clear and refill) the keypool. (#23093)

- `listunspent` now includes `ancestorcount`, `ancestorsize`, and
  `ancestorfees` for each transaction output that is still in the mempool.
  (#12677)

- `lockunspent` now optionally takes a third parameter, `persistent`, which
  causes the lock to be written persistently to the wallet database. This
  allows UTXOs to remain locked even after node restarts or crashes. (#23065)

- `receivedby` RPCs now include coinbase transactions. Previously, the
  following wallet RPCs excluded coinbase transactions: `getreceivedbyaddress`,
  `getreceivedbylabel`, `listreceivedbyaddress`, `listreceivedbylabel`. This
  release changes this behaviour and returns results accounting for received
  coins from coinbase outputs. The previous behaviour can be restored using the
  configuration `-deprecatedrpc=exclude_coinbase`, but may be removed in a
  future release. (#14707)

- A new option in the same `receivedby` RPCs, `include_immature_coinbase`
  (default=`false`), determines whether to account for immature coinbase
  transactions. Immature coinbase transactions are coinbase transactions that
  have 100 or fewer confirmations, and are not spendable. (#14707)

GUI changes
-----------

- UTXOs which are locked via the GUI are now stored persistently in the
  wallet database, so are not lost on node shutdown or crash. (#23065)

- The Bech32 checkbox has been replaced with a dropdown for all address types, including the new Bech32m (BIP-350) standard for Taproot enabled wallets.

Low-level changes
=================

RPC
---

- `getblockchaininfo` now returns a new `time` field, that provides the chain tip time. (#22407)

Tests
-----

- For the `regtest` network the activation heights of several softforks were
  set to block height 1. They can be changed by the runtime setting
  `-testactivationheight=name@height`. (#22818)