Bitcoin Core 24.0, the long-awaited but contentious upgrade, went live on November 26, paving the way for the Bitcoin memory pool, which will function as a holding area for unconfirmed transactions. The memory pool will enable complete Replace-by-Charge logic, allowing nodes to accept or deny competing transactions if one of them has a high fee. Before Bitcoin Core 24.0, Bitcoin Core nodes used “opt-in RBF” logic, wherein miners replaced a conflicting transaction in the memory pool if marked as replaceable.
Prior it was on First-Come First-Serve Basis
The RBF standard was introduced in 2016 and was made available on the Bitcoin Network via the BIP 125 upgrade. Before RBF, the memory pool only accepted transactions on a first-come, first-served basis. The latest release includes a Full-RBF, which has sparked controversy in the Crypto Currency community owing to concerns that it could render zero-confirmation transactions obsolete.
Furthermore, most opponents believe the new Crypto Currency function would encourage double-spend assaults, causing zero confirmation programs like Muun to block the capability for thousands of users. According to Thomas Fahrer, Appolo’s co-founder, bringing the Full RBF to Bitcoin makes zero-confirmation transactions riskier since it raises the likelihood of suffering double-spend attacks when accepting such payments.
Wallet Updates
The following are a few Wallet Updates
- Initial Miniscript Support
Bitcoin Core 24.0 adds Miniscript support by expanding the wsh() output descriptor. While it is a fundamental connection, it lays the path for more complicated scripting to deliver to Bitcoin in a more straightforward — and safer — manner. Miniscript may view as a foundation (or template) for Bitcoin Script, the native programming language of Bitcoin. Bitcoin Script allows all programming capabilities accessible for Bitcoin, including the most basic: identifying who is permitted to spend a specific currency.
For each Bitcoin transaction, the sender asks the recipient’s address and uses it to build a script that locks the Bitcoin delivered so that only the receiver may spend it. In other words, Miniscript “contains” some functionality of pre-set Bitcoin Scripts to a predictable behavior pattern, decreasing potential dangers by minimizing unexpected behavior. In effect, it gives a “toolbox” for developers to dabble with and construct advanced and intricate Bitcoin scripts rather than manually do it all using Bitcoin Script.
Users may now construct a wallet containing a Miniscript script, create addresses for that wallet, and fund them with Bitcoin starting with Bitcoin Core 24.0. However, the Bitcoin Core wallet does not permit spending from such addresses. Therefore Miniscript-enabled wallets on Bitcoin Core are now watch-only.
Miniscript comes in handy in this situation. Miniscript enables the systematic creation of a subset of Bitcoin Scripts.
It offers, among other things, analysis, composition, and generic signing, allowing developers to write complex scripts more reliably.
- Changeless Transactions
Sendall is a new RPC that allows users to spend their entire amount of specified unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs). Without producing change, the RPC will deliver the amount contained in the given UTXOs to one or more recipients.
(Sendall, by default, will spend every UTXO in the wallet.) In a few circumstances, this conduct may be advantageous. First and foremost, the user may wish to empty their wallet. Calling the new RPC with the default settings will do this quickly.
Second, people may choose to improve their privacy by refusing to modify it. Users frequently lose track of where change addresses originated; as a result, they might mix them with other UTXOs as inputs in a subsequent transaction. The common-input-ownership heuristic, a frequently used premise in chain analysis that assumes all information in a transaction belongs to the same user, might raise privacy concerns.
In the change output scenario, the user would establish that link, thereby risking the deanonymization of several currencies since a chain analyst may cluster part of that user’s addresses as a wallet. A changeless payment solves this problem by generating a transaction that spends all of the specified UTXOs. Because there is no change, the user cannot make the error, as mentioned earlier.
Furthermore, a changeless payment raises a legitimate question in the mind of a chain analyzer as to whether the new output is under the same entity that delivered the price (a simple cash transfer to a new address).
GUI Changes
The Bitcoin Core GUI has a reputation for needing more functionality than remote procedure calls (RPCs) and command line tools can provide. Bitcoin Core 24.0 is attempting to change some of those. The latest version of Bitcoin Core includes a new menu item on the GUI that allows users to restore a wallet from a backup, making it easier for non-technical users to restore backups. Previously, this option was only available via the command line.
Bitcoin Core 24.0 alters this. The latest release integrates the GUI settings page with bitcoin.conf file. When a user accesses the client’s settings via the GUI, it retrieves the settings displayed from the configuration file. (It’s worth noting that this is an indirect link because of changes in the GUI to settings.json, a file that takes priority over bitcoin.conf.)
