Bitcoin Core version 28.0 is now available from:

https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-28.0/

This release includes new features, various bug fixes and performance
improvements, as well as updated translations.

Please report bugs using the issue tracker at GitHub:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues

To receive security and update notifications, please subscribe to:

https://bitcoincore.org/en/list/announcements/join/

How to Upgrade

If you are running an older version, shut it down. Wait until it has completely
shut down (which might take a few minutes in some cases), then run the
installer (on Windows) or just copy over /Applications/Bitcoin-Qt (on macOS)
or bitcoind/bitcoin-qt (on Linux).

Upgrading directly from a version of Bitcoin Core that has reached its EOL is
possible, but it might take some time if the data directory needs to be migrated. Old
wallet versions of Bitcoin Core are generally supported.

Running Bitcoin Core binaries on macOS requires self signing.
<pre>cd /path/to/bitcoin-28.0/bin
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine bitcoin-cli bitcoin-qt bitcoin-tx bitcoin-util bitcoin-wallet bitcoind test_bitcoin
codesign -s - bitcoin-cli bitcoin-qt bitcoin-tx bitcoin-util bitcoin-wallet bitcoind test_bitcoin
</pre>

Compatibility

Bitcoin Core is supported and extensively tested on operating systems
using the Linux Kernel 3.17+, macOS 11.0+, and Windows 7 and newer. Bitcoin
Core should also work on most other UNIX-like systems but is not as
frequently tested on them. It is not recommended to use Bitcoin Core on
unsupported systems.

Notable changes

Testnet4/BIP94 support

Support for Testnet4 as specified in BIP94
has been added. The network can be selected with the -testnet4 option and
the section header is also named [testnet4].

While the intention is to phase out support for Testnet3 in an upcoming
version, support for it is still available via the known options in this
release. (#29775)

Windows Data Directory

The default data directory on Windows has been moved from C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin
to C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Bitcoin. Bitcoin Core will check the existence
of the old directory first and continue to use that directory for backwards
compatibility if it is present. (#27064)

JSON-RPC 2.0 Support

The JSON-RPC server now recognizes JSON-RPC 2.0 requests and responds with
strict adherence to the specification.
See JSON-RPC-interface.md for details. (#27101)

JSON-RPC clients may need to be updated to be compatible with the JSON-RPC server.
Please open an issue on GitHub if any compatibility issues are found.

libbitcoinconsensus Removal

The libbitcoin-consensus library was deprecated in 27.0 and is now completely removed. (#29648)

P2P and Network Changes

• Previously if Bitcoin Core was listening for P2P connections, either using
  default settings or via bind=addr:port it would always also bind to
  127.0.0.1:8334 to listen for Tor connections. It was not possible to switch
  this off, even if the node didn't use Tor. This has been changed and now
  bind=addr:port results in binding on addr:port only. The default behavior
  of binding to 0.0.0.0:8333 and 127.0.0.1:8334 has not been changed.
  
  If you are using a bind=... configuration without bind=...=onion and rely
  on the previous implied behavior to accept incoming Tor connections at
  127.0.0.1:8334, you need to now make this explicit by using
  bind=... bind=127.0.0.1:8334=onion. (#22729)
  
• Bitcoin Core will now fail to start up if any of its P2P binds fail, rather
  than the previous behaviour where it would only abort startup if all P2P
  binds had failed. (#22729)
  
• UNIX domain sockets can now be used for proxy connections. Set -onion or -proxy
  to the local socket path with the prefix unix: (e.g. -onion=unix:/home/me/torsocket).
  (#27375)
  
• UNIX socket paths are now accepted for -zmqpubrawblock and -zmqpubrawtx with
  the format -zmqpubrawtx=unix:/path/to/file (#27679)
  
• Additional "in" and "out" flags have been added to -whitelist to control whether
  permissions apply to inbound connections and/or manual ones (default: inbound only). (#27114)
  
• Transactions having a feerate that is too low will be opportunistically paired with
  their child transactions and submitted as a package, thus enabling the node to download
  1-parent-1-child packages using the existing transaction relay protocol. Combined with
  other mempool policies, this change allows limited "package relay" when a parent transaction
  is below the mempool minimum feerate. Topologically Restricted Until Confirmation (TRUC)
  parents are additionally allowed to be below the minimum relay feerate (i.e., pay 0 fees).
  Use the submitpackage RPC to submit packages directly to the node. Warning: this P2P
  feature is limited (unlike the submitpackage interface, a child with multiple unconfirmed
  parents is not supported) and not yet reliable under adversarial conditions. (#28970)
  

Mempool Policy Changes

• Transactions with version number set to 3 are now treated as standard on all networks (#29496),
  subject to opt-in Topologically Restricted Until Confirmation (TRUC) transaction policy as
  described in BIP 431.  The
  policy includes limits on spending unconfirmed outputs (#28948), eviction of a previous descendant
  if a more incentive-compatible one is submitted (#29306), and a maximum transaction size of 10,000vB
  (#29873). These restrictions simplify the assessment of incentive compatibility of accepting or
  replacing TRUC transactions, thus ensuring any replacements are more profitable for the node and
  making fee-bumping more reliable.
  
• Pay To Anchor (P2A) is a new standard witness output type for spending,
  a newly recognised output template. This allows for key-less anchor
  outputs, with compact spending conditions for additional efficiencies on
  top of an equivalent sh(OP_TRUE) output, in addition to the txid stability
  of the spending transaction.
  N.B. propagation of this output spending on the network will be limited
  until a sufficient number of nodes on the network adopt this upgrade. (#30352)
  
• Limited package RBF is now enabled, where the proposed conflicting package would result in
  a connected component, aka cluster, of size 2 in the mempool. All clusters being conflicted
  against must be of size 2 or lower. (#28984)
  
• The default value of the -mempoolfullrbf configuration option has been changed from 0 to 1,
  i.e. mempoolfullrbf=1. (#30493)
  

Updated RPCs

• The dumptxoutset RPC now returns the UTXO set dump in a new and
  improved format. Correspondingly, the loadtxoutset RPC now expects
  this new format in the dumps it tries to load. Dumps with the old
  format are no longer supported and need to be recreated using the
  new format to be usable. (#29612)
  
• AssumeUTXO mainnet parameters have been added for height 840,000.
  This means the loadtxoutset RPC can now be used on mainnet with
  the matching UTXO set from that height. (#28553)
  
• The warnings field in getblockchaininfo, getmininginfo and
  getnetworkinfo now returns all the active node warnings as an array
  of strings, instead of a single warning. The current behaviour
  can be temporarily restored by running Bitcoin Core with the configuration
  option -deprecatedrpc=warnings. (#29845)
  
• Previously when using the sendrawtransaction RPC and specifying outputs
  that are already in the UTXO set, an RPC error code of -27 with the
  message "Transaction already in block chain" was returned in response.
  The error message has been changed to "Transaction outputs already in utxo set"
  to more accurately describe the source of the issue. (#30212)
  
• The default mode for the estimatesmartfee RPC has been updated from conservative to economical,
  which is expected to reduce over-estimation for many users, particularly if Replace-by-Fee is an option.
  For users that require high confidence in their fee estimates at the cost of potentially over-estimating,
  the conservative mode remains available. (#30275)
  
• RPC scantxoutset now returns 2 new fields in the "unspents" JSON array: blockhash and confirmations.
  See the scantxoutset help for details. (#30515)
  
• RPC submitpackage now allows 2 new arguments to be passed: maxfeerate and maxburnamount. See the
  subtmitpackage help for details. (#28950)
  

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

Updated REST APIs

• Parameter validation for /rest/getutxos has been improved by rejecting
  truncated or overly large txids and malformed outpoint indices via raising
  an HTTP_BAD_REQUEST "Parse error". These requests were previously handled
  silently. (#30482, #30444)

Build System

• GCC 11.1 or later, or Clang 16.0 or later,
  are now required to compile Bitcoin Core. (#29091, #30263)
  
• The minimum required glibc to run Bitcoin Core is now
  2.31. This means that RHEL 8 and Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic)
  are no-longer supported. (#29987)
  
• --enable-lcov-branch-coverage has been removed, given
  incompatibilities between lcov version 1 &amp; 2. LCOV_OPTS
  should be used to set any options instead. (#30192)
  

Updated Settings

• When running with -alertnotify, an alert can now be raised multiple
  times instead of just once. Previously, it was only raised when unknown
  new consensus rules were activated. Its scope has now been increased to
  include all kernel warnings. Specifically, alerts will now also be raised
  when an invalid chain with a large amount of work has been detected.
  Additional warnings may be added in the future. (#30058)

Changes to GUI or wallet related settings can be found in the GUI or Wallet section below.

Wallet

• The wallet now detects when wallet transactions conflict with the mempool. Mempool-conflicting
  transactions can be seen in the "mempoolconflicts" field of gettransaction. The inputs
  of mempool-conflicted transactions can now be respent without manually abandoning the
  transactions when the parent transaction is dropped from the mempool, which can cause wallet
  balances to appear higher. (#27307)
  
• A new max_tx_weight option has been added to the RPCs fundrawtransaction, walletcreatefundedpsbt, and send.
  It specifies the maximum transaction weight. If the limit is exceeded during funding, the transaction will not be built.
  The default value is 4,000,000 WU. (#29523)
  
• A new createwalletdescriptor RPC allows users to add new automatically generated
  descriptors to their wallet. This can be used to upgrade wallets created prior to the
  introduction of a new standard descriptor, such as taproot. (#29130)
  
• A new RPC gethdkeys lists all of the BIP32 HD keys in use by all of the descriptors in the wallet.
  These keys can be used in conjunction with createwalletdescriptor to create and add single key
  descriptors to the wallet for a particular key that the wallet already knows. (#29130)
  
• The sendall RPC can now spend unconfirmed change and will include additional fees as necessary
  for the resulting transaction to bump the unconfirmed transactions' feerates to the specified feerate. (#28979)
  
• In RPC bumpfee, if a fee_rate is specified, the feerate is no longer restricted
  to following the wallet's incremental feerate of 5 sat/vb. The feerate must still be
  at least the sum of the original fee and the mempool's incremental feerate. (#27969)
  

GUI Changes

• The "Migrate Wallet" menu allows users to migrate any legacy wallet in their wallet
  directory, regardless of the wallets loaded. (gui#824)
  
• The "Information" window now displays the maximum mempool size along with the
  mempool usage. (gui#825)
  

Low-level Changes

Tests

• The BIP94 timewarp attack mitigation is now active on the regtest network. (#30681)
  
• A new -testdatadir option has been added to test_bitcoin to allow specifying the
  location of unit test data directories. (#26564)
  

Blockstorage

• Block files are now XOR'd by default with a key stored in the blocksdir.
  Previous releases of Bitcoin Core or previous external software will not be able to read the blocksdir with a non-zero XOR-key.
  Refer to the -blocksxor help for more details. (#28052)

Chainstate

• The chainstate database flushes that occur when blocks are pruned will no longer
  empty the database cache. The cache will remain populated longer, which significantly
  reduces the time for initial block download to complete. (#28280)

Dependencies

• The dependency on Boost.Process has been replaced with cpp-subprocess, which is contained in source.
  Builders will no longer need Boost.Process to build with external signer support. (#28981)

Credits

Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:

• 0xb10c
• Alfonso Roman Zubeldia
• Andrew Toth
• AngusP
• Anthony Towns
• Antoine Poinsot
• Anton A
• Ava Chow
• Ayush Singh
• Ben Westgate
• Brandon Odiwuor
• brunoerg
• bstin
• Charlie
• Christopher Bergqvist
• Cory Fields
• crazeteam
• Daniela Brozzoni
• David Gumberg
• dergoegge
• Edil Medeiros
• Epic Curious
• Fabian Jahr
• fanquake
• furszy
• glozow
• Greg Sanders
• hanmz
• Hennadii Stepanov
• Hernan Marino
• Hodlinator
• ishaanam
• ismaelsadeeq
• Jadi
• Jon Atack
• josibake
• jrakibi
• kevkevin
• kevkevinpal
• Konstantin Akimov
• laanwj
• Larry Ruane
• Lőrinc
• Luis Schwab
• Luke Dashjr
• MarcoFalke
• marcofleon
• Marnix
• Martin Saposnic
• Martin Zumsande
• Matt Corallo
• Matthew Zipkin
• Matt Whitlock
• Max Edwards
• Michael Dietz
• Murch
• nanlour
• pablomartin4btc
• Peter Todd
• Pieter Wuille
• @RandyMcMillan
• RoboSchmied
• Roman Zeyde
• Ryan Ofsky
• Sebastian Falbesoner
• Sergi Delgado Segura
• Sjors Provoost
• spicyzboss
• StevenMia
• stickies-v
• stratospher
• Suhas Daftuar
• sunerok
• tdb3
• TheCharlatan
• umiumi
• Vasil Dimov
• virtu
• willcl-ark

As well as to everyone that helped with translations on
Transifex.

Bitcointalk Community Awards is a great opportunity for us to express our appreciation to those special people who are doing their best for their community, and for the impact they have on the forum .... this is what we said for 4 years in a row. We're still here to recap 2024, and you'll still be voting for events or users, but for the first time, all the prizes will go to those who've been behind the scenes all these years. All the prizes go to voters. 🏆

       What prizes await the winners?

This year, our sponsor 🔥 BC.Game, GazetaBitcoin, [C]ryptioS took care of the prizes! Prizes will go to 15% of ALL qualified votes, or 30 Winners will receive $150 each to their Bitcoin addresses. Considering the dynamics of the number of votes in previous years, we will have two main prize baskets, each of which will contain about 100 users. And also a special raffle with custom plastic BC cards, BTC Romania cards, bonus codes and Surprise! 🎁 Note.

      How it works?

For 60 days, public voting will be open, in which any active user can take part. Any user has the right to conduct campaigning in a separate thread, specially created for this purpose. Who will be among the top three winners in each respective category depends only on your activity. Also this year the "vote power" rule will apply to votes cast for the 1st place winners in the 2023 BCA, such votes will be counted as 0.75 to 1 ➥ Note.

• Up to 3 users you can vote in each category ➥ Note.
• You must explain why you are nominating a user. ➥ Note.
• You must have 50 earned merits to vote / No merit sending is allowed from nominees to users which nominated them ➥ Note.

---

	Custom title	Description of the Nomination
https://i.ibb.co/FndVFZp/QLAeKFh.png	Hero of Good	The award is given to the informal leader! https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/english/new.gif This person has dedicated many years to serving the community and left an indelible legacy, a person whose name embodies the true spirit of the cypherpunk. The departed heroes also deserve this award!
https://i.ibb.co/WW346gd/jcK4Rgi.png	Forum Ninja	The award is presented to the participant whose name symbolizes trust and wisdom. https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/english/new.gif There have always been users on the forum who stand out from the crowd in writing style and objectivity, those whose activity seems omnipresent and those without whom you cannot imagine Bitcointalk.
https://i.ibb.co/kDN3374/jQ3GJDC.png	Bitcoin Geek	The award is given to the participant who you felt was the most helpful in the Bitcoin-related areas. Tell us which of your acquaintances is passionate about Bitcoin to the extreme, who can easily explain to you such nuances that you did not even know about or who simply chose a ASIC for your grandmother.
https://i.ibb.co/SfDhg2D/AUCw2Ot.png	Best Event	What event had the biggest impact on you? This nomination is a tribute to the most notable events in the crypto community or the most significant for you personally. This is the fifth annual award, you can only nominate and vote for all significant events of 2024.
https://i.ibb.co/3ySG2Fz/tGCVupo.png	Best Project	We are talking about a business or any project presented on Bitcointalk. https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/english/new.gif
https://i.ibb.co/f09VMwm/6UtYtRH.png	Discovery of the Year	Perhaps one of the most unexpected but at the same time iconic categories, which shows that the forum is alive. The award is presented not only to novice Bitcoiners, but also to other users who have been actively participating in the life of the forum over the past year ... heck, you can even nominate your best Bitcointalk friend!
https://i.ibb.co/BBV7FVV/hGBuDKT.png	Help Buster	The award is given to an outstanding volunteer working exclusively for the benefit of the community. https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/english/new.gif He adheres to a fairly strict moral code, is a role model, and consistently demonstrates unstoppable enthusiasm for helping newcomers, reporting, detecting scammers, or stopping AI activity.
https://i.ibb.co/VVNkrkJ/FobhRjY.png	Craft Master	The award is presented to those who sincerely love their craft, whether it is a professional activity or a hobby. We tend to think that this award is best suited to the most significant figure among collectors, managers, escrows, designers or users who are so passionate about sports and p2p that they motivate others to bets solely in BTC.
https://talkimg.com/images/2025/01/05/ORJh8.png	Local Hero	Want to vote for your friends? Great! https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/english/new.gif We know that many users do not go beyond their local sections, so we would like to know whose names represent this or that community. Well, let's see whose local community is the most united?
https://i.ibb.co/h28HmsQ/TMwPonn.png	Miss Bitcointalk	Although girls are now in the minority on Bitcointalk, 5 to 1, they are still wonderful, interesting and important to us. I understand that choosing three winners from among all our beautiful girls is problematic, but still we will try. Who do you think especially deserves to be Miss Bitcointalk?
_________________	_________________