Bitcoin Core Releases New Version for Testing: Details

The Bitcoin Core project has unveiled a release candidate for a minor version update (29.1).

It is worth noting that Bitcoin Core is the main open-source software that runs on the leading blockchain network.

Release candidates end up being implemented if no issues are discovered during a testing period.

The update comes roughly a month after Bitcoin Core v28.2 was officially released on June 30.

No excessive sigops

With this minor release, several bug fixes and performance updates have been introduced.

Any standard transaction that packs in an excessive number of legacy signature operations (“sigops”) will be treated as non-standard by nodes. The cap is set at 2,500 legal sigops per transaction.

Classifying such transactions as non‑standard before could alleviate the negative impact of DoS on unupgraded miners. Malicious transactions will no longer be able to cause node overload with excessive sigops.

Typical transactions will not be affected by the change introduced with the minor update. It is also worth noting that miners could potentially include non-standard transactions, but they will not be relayed by default nodes.

Other changes

The update also prevents users on older 32-bit systems from accidentally setting high memory values that impact the stability of Bitcoin Core.

It introduces such wallet fixes, such as preventing crashes during rare blockchain reorganization events and making sure that the correct wallet version appears in logs.

Nodes will also refrain from using certain network ports, such as RDP (3389) and VNC (5900), to prevent potential security risks.

Finally, the proposed version also removes the broken random number feature on some ARM devices.