Bitcoin Core Releases New Update

Lately, there have been all sorts of rumors and speculations about the the new bitcoin core update that was heading closer every passing day. Well, the rumors finally come to an end as we now have the official release. On 23 August 2016, Bitcoin Core released the latest update (0.13.0) which is available on bitcoin.org. As a matter of fact, there have been more than 35 versions of bitcoin core ever since it was first deployed in 2011. Also, each new version was better than the previous one in one way or another. The last Bitcoin Core version i.e 0.12.1 offered several new features, changes and enhancements including the deployment of BIP 9, BIP 68 and BIP 112 soft fork. It also provided the much needed block size scalability. So, the expectations from Bitcoin Core 0.13.0 were no doubt higher.

Well, to say the least, the new Bitcoin Core 0.13.0 doesn’t disappoint the users. The new core version incorporates several new features and bug fixes, segwit being one of them. Segwit stands for Segregated Witness which resolves some serious flaws prevalent in bitcoin core including scalability and malleability issues.

Also read Opera Is Likely To Have A Bitcoin Integration Soon.

Bitcoin Core No Longer Compatible With Win XP

With the new release, Bitcoin Core has finally ended support for Windows XP. This step seemed pretty obvious as there are roughly a very small number of people who use this obsolete and outdated version of Microsoft Windows. Microsoft ended support for Windows XP two years earlier and it was vaguely in use. Besides, there have been certain reports about the last core version which crashes frequently when used on Windows XP. Seeing all these notable factors, the decision has been made and from now onwards, Bitcoin Core 0.13.0 and all the later versions will not be compatible with Windows XP. So in case you are still using Windows XP, you need to upgrade the OS before getting started with Bitcoin Core 0.13.0.   

New Features, Notable Changes & More

First of all, the cache memory of the bitcore database has been increased. The default database cache memory that used to be just 100 MiB has now been increased to 300 MiB, thereby improving the overall performance of the software up to a great extent. However, the cache memory can be reduced to 100 MiB whenever need by giving simple commands. Apart from that, it also provides support for Compact Blocks using BIP 152. The deployment of BIP 152 not only reduces the bandwidth spikes at relay times but also reduces propagation delay in some cases.

As already mentioned above, the new release also activates Segregated Witness or Segwit which was initially proposed in BIP 141, 143, 144 and 145. Segwit speeds up the bitcoin transactions and overcomes the sluggish behavior at certain times. However, Segwit is not supported to be used on mainnet as the activation parameters were mainnet were not specified in BIP 141. But the next bitcoin core version is expected to provide support for the mainnet once the updation of BIP 141 is done.