Bitcoin Core update was coordinated by developer Wladimir van der Laan

On November 24, version 0.19.0 of Bitcoin Core software was officially launched. This is the nineteenth version of the client released by Satoshi Nakamoto 11 years ago.

Contents hide

1 Bech32 addresses become default in the GUI

2 Outbound double by default connections for nodes

3 Bloom filters are no longer accepted by default

4 Alternative “compact client-side block filtering” is introduced

5 Elimination of the BIP Payment Protocol 70

5.1 Related posts:

The update was coordinated by developer Wladimir van der Laan, who worked with about 100 contributors for six months.

Resulting from 550 combined proposals, Bitcoin Core update 0.19.0 includes a number of performance improvements, upgrades and bug fixes, as well as other changes.
These include:

Bech32 addresses become default in the GUI

The “bech32” address format (BIP 173) has already been introduced in Bitcoin Core 0.16.0, launched in early 2018. It has now been established as the default graphical user interface (GUI) option for Bitcoin Core wallets.

Bech32 addresses are addresses starting with “bc1” (as opposed to addresses starting with 1 or 3.) These are also slightly longer and there is no distinction between lower case and uppercase letters.

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In addition, bech32 offers benefits for SegWit wallets – new addresses require the transmission of less data through the Bitcoin network to be included in the blockchain. This makes transactions even cheaper than traditional SegWit transactions.

Those who prefer to use the old version can change the settings.

Outbound double by default connections for nodes

The Bitcoin network works on the basis of interconnected nodes, which transmit blocks, transactions and data associated with transactions. To avoid vulnerability to attacks that seek to separate nodes from the rest of the network, update 0.19.0 has increased the number of connections by 2. To avoid memory problems, these new connections are only used for block forwarding.

In this way, the nodes will be able to receive correct information, reducing the risks associated with partitioning attacks.

Bloom filters are no longer accepted by default

Light versions of the Bitcoin client used by mobile wallets or some versions of desktop wallets use the so-called Bloom Filters. These are used to request relevant data from random nodes in the network. These generate vulnerabilities for light clients and cost processing power and node space.

For this reason, Bitcoin Core 0.19.0 version no longer supports Bloom filter requests by default. Users can still change the default settings to accept them if they wish.

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Alternative “compact client-side block filtering” is introduced

An alternative to Bloom Filters was introduced BIP 158 – “compact client-side block filtering”. These are filters that can be created by the complete nodes for each block. Light wallets can thus download the block and choose the relevant transaction information from it.

Elimination of the BIP Payment Protocol 70

The Payment Protocol (BIP 70) was designed a few years ago to improve the payment experience of Bitcoin. In addition to the regular payment, a user and merchant would communicate additional details about a payment.

Although Bitcoin Core has integrated the Payment Protocol into its GUI, the BIP 70 standard has never been widely adopted. Most wallets use the basic URI scheme (BIP 21) to receive payments – link or scannable QR code that communicates, for example, the address and payment amount.

The only exception is the BitPay payment processor, which used a modified version of BIP70.
The developers have decided to eliminate this protocol because, being unused, it has multiple vulnerabilities.

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In addition to the changes mentioned above, Bitcoin Core update 0.19.0 comes with a long list of minor upgrades and upgrades.

For example, users can configure a partial node from the start, which makes it easier to implement the nodes. Also included are new features for the partially signed Bitcoin Transaction Protocol (PSBT). These are very useful for multisig and CoinJoin transactions.

There are also several improvements in the field of wallet descriptors, which is particularly useful for programmers working on Bitcoin applications. Bitcoin Core 0.19.0 nodes will accept and transmit transactions using a future SegWit version to ensure that future updates will continue smoothly.