Bitcoin Core version 0.9.0 is now available from:

https://bitcoin.org/bin/0.9.0/

This is a new major version release, bringing both new features and bug fixes.

Please report bugs using the issue tracker at github:

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

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 for older versions), uninstall all earlier versions of Bitcoin, then run the installer (on Windows) or just copy over /Applications/Bitcoin-Qt (on Mac) or bitcoind/bitcoin-qt (on Linux).

If you are upgrading from version 0.7.2 or earlier, the first time you run 0.9.0 your blockchain files will be re-indexed, which will take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours, depending on the speed of your machine.

On Windows, do not forget to uninstall all earlier versions of the Bitcoin client first, especially if you are switching to the 64-bit version.

Windows 64-bit installer

New in 0.9.0 is the Windows 64-bit version of the client. There have been frequent reports of users running out of virtual memory on 32-bit systems during the initial sync. Because of this it is recommended to install the 64-bit version if your system supports it.

NOTE: Release candidate 2 Windows binaries are not code-signed; use PGP and the SHA256SUMS.asc file to make sure your binaries are correct. In the final 0.9.0 release, Windows setup.exe binaries will be code-signed.

OSX 10.5 / 32-bit no longer supported

0.9.0 drops support for older Macs. The minimum requirements are now:

Downgrading warnings

The ‘chainstate’ for this release is not always compatible with previous releases, so if you run 0.9 and then decide to switch back to a 0.8.x release you might get a blockchain validation error when starting the old release (due to ‘pruned outputs’ being omitted from the index of unspent transaction outputs).

Running the old release with the -reindex option will rebuild the chainstate data structures and correct the problem.

Also, the first time you run a 0.8.x release on a 0.9 wallet it will rescan the blockchain for missing spent coins, which will take a long time (tens of minutes on a typical machine).

Rebranding to Bitcoin Core

To reduce confusion between Bitcoin-the-network and Bitcoin-the-software we have renamed the reference client to Bitcoin Core.

OP_RETURN and data in the block chain

On OP_RETURN: There was been some confusion and misunderstanding in the community, regarding the OP_RETURN feature in 0.9 and data in the blockchain. This change is not an endorsement of storing data in the blockchain. The OP_RETURN change creates a provably-prunable output, to avoid data storage schemes – some of which were already deployed – that were storing arbitrary data such as images as forever-unspendable TX outputs, bloating bitcoin’s UTXO database.

Storing arbitrary data in the blockchain is still a bad idea; it is less costly and far more efficient to store non-currency data elsewhere.

Autotools build system

For 0.9.0 we switched to an autotools-based build system instead of individual (q)makefiles.

Using the standard “./autogen.sh; ./configure; make” to build Bitcoin-Qt and bitcoind makes it easier for experienced open source developers to contribute to the project.

Be sure to check doc/build-*.md for your platform before building from source.

Bitcoin-cli

Another change in the 0.9 release is moving away from the bitcoind executable functioning both as a server and as a RPC client. The RPC client functionality (“tell the running bitcoin daemon to do THIS”) was split into a separate executable, ‘bitcoin-cli’. The RPC client code will eventually be removed from bitcoind, but will be kept for backwards compatibility for a release or two.

walletpassphrase RPC

The behavior of the walletpassphrase RPC when the wallet is already unlocked has changed between 0.8 and 0.9.

The 0.8 behavior of walletpassphrase is to fail when the wallet is already unlocked:

> walletpassphrase 1000
walletunlocktime = now + 1000
> walletpassphrase 10
Error: Wallet is already unlocked (old unlock time stays)

The new behavior of walletpassphrase is to set a new unlock time overriding the old one:

> walletpassphrase 1000
walletunlocktime = now + 1000
> walletpassphrase 10
walletunlocktime = now + 10 (overriding the old unlock time)

This release contains a few fixes for transaction ID (TXID) malleability issues:

  • -nospendzeroconfchange command-line option, to avoid spending zero-confirmation change
  • IsStandard() transaction rules tightened to prevent relaying and mining of mutated transactions
  • Additional information in listtransactions/gettransaction output to report wallet transactions that conflict with each other because they spend the same outputs.
  • Bug fixes to the getbalance/listaccounts RPC commands, which would report incorrect balances for double-spent (or mutated) transactions.
  • New option: -zapwallettxes to rebuild the wallet’s transaction information

Transaction Fees

This release drops the default fee required to relay transactions across the network and for miners to consider the transaction in their blocks to 0.01mBTC per kilobyte.

Note that getting a transaction relayed across the network does NOT guarantee that the transaction will be accepted by a miner; by default, miners fill their blocks with 50 kilobytes of high-priority transactions, and then with 700 kilobytes of the highest-fee-per-kilobyte transactions.

The minimum relay/mining fee-per-kilobyte may be changed with the minrelaytxfee option. Note that previous releases incorrectly used the mintxfee setting to determine which low-priority transactions should be considered for inclusion in blocks.

The wallet code still uses a default fee for low-priority transactions of 0.1mBTC per kilobyte. During periods of heavy transaction volume, even this fee may not be enough to get transactions confirmed quickly; the mintxfee option may be used to override the default.