Riecoin Core/Release Notes/23.04

From Riecoin

Riecoin Core 23.04 was released on April 29 2023. Latest binaries for Riecoin Core are available from: https://riecoin.dev/resources/RiecoinCore.php

Please report bugs or open any relevant discussion about Riecoin Core on the Riecoin Forum: https://forum.riecoin.dev/

Compatibility

Riecoin Core is supported and tested on recent Debian based Linux distributions and Windows 10 and newer. It should also work on most other Unix-like systems, but is not as much tested on them, and full functionality on unsupported systems is not guaranteed.

How to Upgrade

Important: this version brings notable changes regarding the Riecoin wallets. This has no consequence for new Riecoin users, but some actions may be required if a previous Riecoin version was used. In the latter case, please pay particular attention to the points in bold, fully read the instructions before starting the upgrade, make sure that you understood all the instructions, and ask questions on Discord or the Forum if you are unsure of something.

  • Make a backup of all your wallets just in case - as long as you saved your wallet.dat somewhere, there will always be a a way to recover your funds if something goes wrong. Don't forget to shut down Riecoin Core before making such backup;
  • Check that all your wallets are Descriptor Wallets. If not (or if you don't know), do one of the following:
    • Send all your funds to an exchange, delete your wallets, and proceed to the upgrade as usual. Then, create a new wallet with the new version, get a new address, send your coins back to yourself, and you are done;
      • Riecoin withdrawal fees are negligible, except FreiExchange that will take 0.5% when withdrawing, so it is not recommended to use that exchange for this if you have a lot of funds.
    • use this guide to manually switch from Legacy to Descriptor Wallets;
    • write your own tools to perform the upgrade;
    • depending on whether important Riecoin actors like pools or exchanges request it, a separate tool, based on Bitcoin's experimental MigrateWallet RPC call, that should upgrade obsolete wallets automatically, might be provided. But don't rely on this option for now.
  • Close your wallets (on Riecoin-Qt, do "File > Close All Wallets") (then reopen them once you performed the upgrade);
  • If you are still running an older version, shut it down. Wait until it has completely shut down (which might take a few minutes in some cases);
  • If you are not using -walletdir, Wallets are now always in a wallets folder. Before, wallets could be made at the root of the Riecoin Data Directory. Here is what to do:
    • Go to your Riecoin Data Directory, and check whether there is a folder named wallets folder inside. If not, create it;
    • If you see outside the wallets folder a wallet.dat file or any folder containing a wallet.dat file, move it to the wallets folder;
  • Run the installer again (on Windows) or replace riecoind/riecoin-qt by the newer one and restart it (on Linux).

It is always recommended to upgrade as soon as possible to the newest Riecoin Core version. Upgrading from versions older than the previous one is in most cases possible, but the larger the version difference is, the more difficult, risky, and less supported the upgrade will be. You are responsible for following the latest Riecoin news and upgrading regularly.

Changes from Riecoin Core 22.03

Here is a list of changes from Riecoin Core 22.03:

  • This release is now based on Bitcoin Core 24.0.1 (instead of 22.0);
  • Legacy/BDB Wallet support was completely dropped;
  • Wallets are now always in a wallets folder (if no -walletdir was specified);
  • By default, generated addresses are now in the "Bech32M" type ("Taproot Addresses" or "P2TR Addresses");
  • It is no longer possible to generate addresses that are not Bech32;
  • Private keys are now prefixed with `prv` rather than being plain hexadecimal strings;
  • Many deprecated or compatibility RPC commands or fields were removed (see Riecoin Core/RPC Calls).

Riecoin 23.04 is expected to be the last Riecoin Core version that is directly ported from Bitcoin Core. The repository and code may be heavily restructured in upcoming versions as there is no longer a need to maintain a code that does not deviate much from Bitcoin's. This will enable much more flexibility to add features, and some useful code from Bitcoin may still occasionally be ported to Riecoin.

Rationales for the changes can be found on this Riecoin Forum Post.

Credits

Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:

Credits are also due for the Bitcoin Developers who contributed from Bitcoin 22.0 to 24.0.1 (see the release notes above).

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