Bitcoin 0.3.2 released

3 messages Satoshi Nakamoto July 17, 2010 — July 18, 2010
Satoshi Nakamoto July 17, 2010 Source · Permalink

Download links available now on bitcoin.org.  Everyone should upgrade to this version.

  • Added a simple security safeguard that locks-in the block chain up to this point.
  • Reduced addr messages to save bandwidth now that there are plenty of nodes to connect to.
  • Spanish translation by milkiway.
  • French translation by aidos.

The security safeguard makes it so even if someone does have more than 50% of the network’s CPU power, they can’t try to go back and redo the block chain before yesterday.  (if you have this update)

I’ll probably put a checkpoint in each version from now on.  Once the software has settled what the widely accepted block chain is, there’s no point in leaving open the unwanted non-zero possibility of revision months later.

Satoshi Nakamoto July 17, 2010 Source · Permalink

Quote from: llama on July 17, 2010, 09:56:25 PMHowever, it’s important that you don’t lock all the way up the very latest block.  Otherwise, the attacker could generate a fake block (or a few) right before you happen to lock it, and then his attack would be far easier than it would have been without the block lock. I went about 200 blocks back.  The block chain was a clean straight line without branches, and there was only one known version of the locked block.

Quote from: llama on July 17, 2010, 09:56:25 PMAlso, I’m assuming that the block lock means that the blocks will also come prepackaged with the client.  Is this so? Sorry, not yet, but I do want to make the initial block download faster.

Satoshi Nakamoto July 18, 2010 Source · Permalink

The change list is basically encompassed by what’s listed in the first message.  Everyone should upgrade to get the important security improvements.

Minimizing to tray had at least 3 different glitches and bugs on Linux, including a crash one, so I disabled it again.  You can still re-enable the option with “-minimizetotray” if you want to use it anyway.  The bugs/glitches are somewhere in wxWidgets or GTK or Gnome and I don’t know how to fix them.  Sorry, I just don’t know what else to do, it’s just too glitchy and buggy to have as a mainline feature.