Bitcoin developers have released an updated version of the main software client Bitcoin Core 0.20.1 with a mechanism to limit the “misbehavior” of peers.
The Bitcoin Core client update contains only minor changes and improvements, unlike the previous version of Bitcoin Core 0.20, which was presented in early June. Version 0.20 was mainly aimed at moving away from the OpenSSL cryptographic library, which caused bugs, crashes and network problems.
According to the accompanying documentation, the main change to Bitcoin Core 0.20.1 is aimed at limiting the “misbehavior” of peers or users transmitting invalid blocks. In the new version, such users will not be blocked, but will receive a special label “discouraged nodes”, which will reduce the likelihood of their interaction with the network. The limited access status can last more than a day, depending on the workload of the Bitcoin blockchain. After restarting the node, the black mark is removed from it.
In addition, the update fixes a notification bug that was present in Bitcoin Core 0.19. Users will now be notified of transactions that are removed from the mempool if they have a conflict with a new block.
The previous Bitcoin Core 0.20 update included 119 programmers’ commits, and only 13 developers participated in the preparation of the latest version of the client. In November, the Bitcoin Core 0.19.0.1 update was released, containing a number of performance improvements as well as tweaks and fixes based on 550 pull requests.
As a reminder, last month, Bitcoin Core team member Jeremy Rubin introduced a new smart contract language for Bitcoin that will increase users’ control over their BTC.
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