Today marks the official release of Bitcoin Core 0.20.0[1], the 20th major release of Bitcoin’s original software client launched by Satoshi Nakamoto over 11 years ago.
Overseen by Bitcoin Core[2] lead maintainer Wladimir van der Laan, this latest major release was developed by over 100 contributors in a span of about six months. The result of more than 500 merged pull requests, Bitcoin Core 0.20.0 mostly cleans up and hardens the Bitcoin Core codebase, advances hardware wallet integration, improves network reliability and includes several other improvements.
Here are some of the more notable changes.
Further Hardware Wallet Integration in GUI
Bitcoin Core has been compatible with hardware wallets since version 0.18.0[3]. However, users cannot yet make transactions with a hardware wallet from Bitcoin Core’s graphical user interface (GUI); they must instead use the command-line interface (CLI) to do that.
Bitcoin Core 0.20.0 is taking a step toward hardware wallet integration into the GUI. Users can now create a transaction without a signature in the Bitcoin Core GUI using the partially signed bitcoin transaction (PSBT) format, and copy it to their clipboard. Once copied, they can transfer the transaction to their hardware wallet to sign it — however, this transfer is not yet automated, and broadcasting the transaction still requires using the CLI.
Future Bitcoin Core releases will continue to advance hardware wallet integration.
Asmap for More Reliable Network Connectivity
Bitcoin Core connects to several peers (other Bitcoin nodes) on the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin Core maps other nodes based on their IP addresses, with the intent to establish connections with peers from various regions and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). If a node receives blocks and transactions from peers located all around the world, it decreases the risk that certain data (like a
