P2SH addresses beginning with 3 on mainnet and m or n on testnet will continue to be valid.
Old and new addresses can be used interchangeably.
miniupnp CVE-2017-8798
----------------------
Bundled miniupnpc was updated to 2.0.20170509. This fixes an integer signedness error (present in MiniUPnPc v1.4.20101221 through v2.0) that allows remote attackers (within the LAN) to cause a denial of service or possibly have unspecified other impact.
This only affects users that have explicitly enabled UPnP through the GUI setting or through the -upnp option, as since the last UPnP vulnerability (in Kevacoin Core 0.10.4) it has been disabled by default.
Developers who require the new testnet blockchain paramaters can find them [here](https://github.com/kevacoin-project/kevacoin/blob/master/src/chainparams.cpp#L220).
code `HTTP_BAD_REQUEST` (400) instead of `HTTP_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR` (500)
when requests contain invalid parameters.
Minimum Fee Rate Policies
-------------------------
Since the changes in 0.13 to automatically limit the size of the mempool and improve the performance of block creation in mining code it has not been important for relay nodes or miners to set `-minrelaytxfee`. With this release the following concepts that were tied to this option have been separated out:
- calculation of threshold for a dust output. (effectively 3 * 1000 satoshis/kB)
- minimum fee rate of a package of transactions to be included in a block created by the mining code. If miners wish to set this minimum they can use the new `-blockmintxfee` option. (defaults to 1000 satoshis/kB)
The `-minrelaytxfee` option continues to exist but is recommended to be left unset.
Fee Estimation Changes
----------------------
- Since 0.13.2 fee estimation for a confirmation target of 1 block has been
disabled. The fee slider will no longer be able to choose a target of 1 block.
This is only a minor behavior change as there was often insufficient
data for this target anyway. `estimatefee 1` will now always return -1 and
`estimatesmartfee 1` will start searching at a target of 2.
- The default target for fee estimation is changed to 6 blocks in both the GUI
(previously 25) and for RPC calls (previously 2).
Removal of Priority Estimation
------------------------------
- Estimation of "priority" needed for a transaction to be included within a target
number of blocks has been removed. The RPC calls are deprecated and will either
return -1 or 1e24 appropriately. The format for `fee_estimates.dat` has also
changed to no longer save these priority estimates. It will automatically be
converted to the new format which is not readable by prior versions of the
software.
- Support for "priority" (coin age) transaction sorting for mining is
considered deprecated in Core and will be removed in the next major version.
This is not to be confused with the `prioritisetransaction` RPC which will remain
supported by Core for adding fee deltas to transactions.
P2P connection management
--------------------------
- Peers manually added through the `-addnode` option or `addnode` RPC now have their own
limit of eight connections which does not compete with other inbound or outbound
connection usage and is not subject to the limitation imposed by the `-maxconnections`
option.
- New connections to manually added peers are performed more quickly.
Introduction of assumed-valid blocks
-------------------------------------
- A significant portion of the initial block download time is spent verifying
scripts/signatures. Although the verification must pass to ensure the security
of the system, no other result from this verification is needed: If the node
knew the history of a given block were valid it could skip checking scripts
for its ancestors.
- A new configuration option 'assumevalid' is provided to express this knowledge
to the software. Unlike the 'checkpoints' in the past this setting does not
force the use of a particular chain: chains that are consistent with it are
processed quicker, but other chains are still accepted if they'd otherwise
be chosen as best. Also unlike 'checkpoints' the user can configure which
block history is assumed true, this means that even outdated software can
sync more quickly if the setting is updated by the user.
- Because the validity of a chain history is a simple objective fact it is much
easier to review this setting. As a result the software ships with a default
value adjusted to match the current chain shortly before release. The use
of this default value can be disabled by setting -assumevalid=0
Fundrawtransaction change address reuse
----------------------------------------
- Before 0.14, `fundrawtransaction` was by default wallet stateless. In
almost all cases `fundrawtransaction` does add a change-output to the
outputs of the funded transaction. Before 0.14, the used keypool key was
never marked as change-address key and directly returned to the keypool
(leading to address reuse). Before 0.14, calling `getnewaddress`
directly after `fundrawtransaction` did generate the same address as
the change-output address.
- Since 0.14, fundrawtransaction does reserve the change-output-key from
the keypool by default (optional by setting `reserveChangeKey`, default =
`true`)
- Users should also consider using `getrawchangeaddress()` in conjunction
with `fundrawtransaction`'s `changeAddress` option.
Unused mempool memory used by coincache
----------------------------------------
- Before 0.14, memory reserved for mempool (using the `-maxmempool` option)
went unused during initial block download, or IBD. In 0.14, the UTXO DB cache
(controlled with the `-dbcache` option) borrows memory from the mempool
when there is extra memory available. This may result in an increase in
memory usage during IBD for those previously relying on only the `-dbcache`
option to limit memory during that time.
Mining
------
In previous versions, getblocktemplate required segwit support from downstream
clients/miners once the feature activated on the network. In this version, it
now supports non-segwit clients even after activation, by removing all segwit
transactions from the returned block template. This allows non-segwit miners to
continue functioning correctly even after segwit has activated.
Due to the limitations in previous versions, getblocktemplate also recommended
non-segwit clients to not signal for the segwit version-bit. Since this is no
longer an issue, getblocktemplate now always recommends signalling segwit for
all miners. This is safe because ability to enforce the rule is the only
required criteria for safe activation, not actually producing segwit-enabled
blocks.
UTXO memory accounting
----------------------
Memory usage for the UTXO cache is being calculated more accurately, so that
the configured limit (`-dbcache`) will be respected when memory usage peaks
during cache flushes. The memory accounting in prior releases is estimated to
only account for half the actual peak utilization.
The default `-dbcache` has also been changed in this release to 450MiB. Users
who currently set `-dbcache` to a high value (e.g. to keep the UTXO more fully
cached in memory) should consider increasing this setting in order to achieve
the same cache performance as prior releases. Users on low-memory systems
(such as systems with 1GB or less) should consider specifying a lower value for
this parameter.
Additional information relating to running on low-memory systems can be found