1.0beta3

1.0 Beta 3

1. Windows, WSL 2, Linux and MacOS installation is significantly streamlined. There is a new Windows installer for the Wallet GUI (huge thanks to @dkackman). In addition all installs can now be from the source repository or just the binary dependencies on WSL 2, most modern Linuxes, and MacOS Catalina. Binary support is for both Python 3.7 and 3.8.

2. There is a new migration tool to move from Beta1 (or 2) to Beta3. It should move everything except your plots. There is also a new command chia init that will migrate files and generate your initial configuration. If you want to use the Wallet or farm, you will also have to chia-generate-keys. You can read step by step instructions for upgrading from a previous beta release. If you've set $CHIA_ROOT you will have to make sure your existing configuration remains compatible manually.

3. Wallet has improved paper wallet recovery support. We now also support restoring old wallets with only the wallet_sk and wallet_target. Beta3's Wallet will re-sync from scratch. You should not copy over any prior Wallet database as they are not compatible with Beta3. Your existing full node will not have to re-sync and its database remains compatible.

4. chia-restart-harvester has been renamed from chia-start-harvester to better reflect its functionality. Use it to restart a harvester that's farming so that it will pick up newly finished plots.

5. Among a lot of bug fixes was removing a regression that slowed plotting on MacOS by 3 times and may have had smaller impacts on plotting speed on other platforms. We've also removed some race conditions in the Wallet, resolved the "invalid blocks could disconnect farmers" bug, and upped the default tls certificate size to 2048 for some unhappy operating systems.

6. We've made lots of little improvements that should speed up node syncing, added full block lookup to chia show, have farmers reconnect to their trusted node if they lose contact, and made the Wallet configurable to connect to a remote trusted node.

Known issues

1. Windows native is close but not here yet. Also, we should be adding back MacOS Mojave support shortly.

2. So why is this Beta 3 you're wondering? Well, we're getting used to our new release management tools and a hotfix devoured our beta2 nomenclature...

3. If you previously used the plot_root variable in config, your plot directory names might not migrate correctly. Please double check the filenames in ~/.chia/beta-1.0b3/config/plots.yaml after migrating

1.0beta1

Beta 1.0

1. There is now full transaction support on the Chia blockchain. In this initial Beta 1.0 release, all transaction types are supported though the wallets and UIs currently only directly support basic transactions like coinbase rewards and sending coins while paying fees. UI support for our smart transactions will be available in the UIs shortly.

2. Wallet and Node GUI’s are available on Windows, Mac, and desktop Linux platforms. We now use an Electron UI that is a full light client wallet that can also serve as a node UI. Our Windows Electron Wallet can run standalone by connecting to other nodes on the network or another node you run. WSL 2 on Windows can run everything except the Wallet but you can run the Wallet on the native Windows side of the same machine. Also the WSL 2 install process is 3 times faster and much easier. Windows native node/farmer/plotting functionality are coming soon. Install is significantly easier with less dependencies on all supported platforms.

3. We have revamped the chia management command line. To start a farmer all you have to do is start the venv with . ./activate and then type chia-start-farmer &. The README.md has been updated to reflect the new commands. The ssh ui and web ui are removed in favor of the cli ui and the Electron GUI. To mimic the ssh ui try chia show -s -c.

4. If you’re a farmer you can use the Wallet to keep track of your earnings. Either use the same keys.yaml on the same machine or copy the keys.yaml to another machine where you want to track of and spend your coins.

5. We have moved all node to node communication to TLS 1.3 by default. For now, all TLS is unauthenticated but certain types of over the wire node to node communications will have the ability to authenticate both by certificate and by inter protocol signature. Encrypting over the wire by default stops casual snooping of transaction origination, light wallet to trusted node communication, and harvester-farmer-node communication for example. This leaves only the mempool and the chain itself open to casual observation by the public and the various entities around the world.

6. Configuration directories have been moved to a default location of HomeDirectory/.chia/release/config, plots/ db/, wallet/ etc. This can be overridden by export CHIA_ROOT=~/.chia for example which would then put the plots directory in HomeDirectory/.chia/plots.

7. The Beta release is not compatible with the history of the Alpha blockchain and we will be ceasing support of the Alpha chain approximately two weeks after the release of this Beta. However, your plots and keys are fully compatible with the Beta chain. Please save your plot keys! Examples of how to save your keys and upgrade to the Beta are available on the repo wiki.

8. The libraries chia-pos, chia-fast-vdf, and chia-bip-158 have been moved to their own repositories: chiapos, chiavdf, chaibip158. They are brought in by chia-blockchain at install time. Our BLS signature library remains at bls-signatures.

9. We have continued to make improvements to the speed of VDF squaring, creating a VDF proof, and verifying a VDF proof.

Known issues

1. Wallet currently has limited support for restoring from a paper wallet. Wallet uses hierarchically deterministic keys, and assumes that any keys that are at index "higher than one" have not been used yet. If you have received a payment to an address associated with a key at a higher index and you want it to appear in Wallet, the current work around is to press the "NEW ADDRESS" button multiple times shortly after sync start. That will make wallet "aware of" addresses at higher indexes. Full support for paper wallet restoration will be added soon.

2. We. Don't... Have.. Windows.... Native. YET!?! But the entire project is compiling on Windows 10 natively. Assistance would be more than appreciated if you have experience building binary python wheels for Windows. We are pushing some limits like uint-128, avx-2, avx-512, and AES-NI so it's not as easy as it looks...

Upgrading

1. If you’re upgrading from Alpha and want to keep your plots, see Upgrading from Alpha to Beta in the repo wiki.

Alpha 1.5.1

Fixed a bug in harvester that caused plots not to be farmed.

Alpha 1.5

Alpha 1.5

1. You can now provide an index to create_plots using the -i flag to create an arbitrary new plot derived from an existing plot key. Thanks @xorinox.
2. There is a new restart_harvester.sh in scripts/ to easily restart a harvester when you want to add a newly completed plot to the farm without restarting farmer, fullnode, timelord, etc.
3. Harvesters now log errors if they encounter a malformed or corrupted plot file. Again thanks @xorinox.
4. New AJAX based full node UI. To access go to http://127.0.0.1:8555/index.html with any modern web browser on the same machine as the full node.
5. VDF verification code is improved and is now more paranoid.
6. Timelords can now be run as a cluster of VDF client instances around a central Timelord instance.. Instructions are available in the Cluster Timelord section of the repo wiki.
7. If you want to benchmark your CPU as a VDF you can use vdf_bench square_asm 500000 for the assembly optimized test or just vdf_bench square 500000 for the plain C++ code path. This tool is found in lib/chiavdf/fast_vdf/.
8. Improvements to shutting down services in all of the scripts in scripts/. Another @xorinox HT.
9. Thanks @dkackman for clean ups to the proof of space code.
10. Thanks to @davision for some typo fixes.

Alpha 1.4.1

Fix stack overflow in verifier

Alpha 1.4

1. Compiling and execution now detect AES-NI, or a lack of it, and fall back to a software AES implementation. This adds support for Raspberry Pi 4, related ARM processors and Celeron processors.
2. Added install instructions for CentOS/RHEL 8.1. Thanks to @A-Caccese for fixes to Windows WSL instructions.
3. Due to changes to the sqlite database that are not backwards compatible, re-synch will be required. Loading the blockchain only loads headers into memory instead of header blocks (header + proofs), speeds up the startup, and reduces normal operation memory usage by 80%. Memory access is now synchronous to reduce use of locks and speed up block processing.
4. Chia fullnode, farmer and harvester now default to logging to chia.log in the chia-blockchain directory. This is configured in config.yaml and due to config.yaml changes it is recommended to edit the new template config instead of using older config.yaml’s from previous versions.
5. Plotting working directory and final directory can both be specified in config.yaml
6. uvloop is now an optional add on.
7. Plotting now logs a timestamp at each major step. Thanks @dkackman who also fixed some compiler warnings. Additionally harvester/farmer will not try to farm plots that they don’t have the key for.
8. Added support for Python 3.8.

Alpha 1.3

1. FullNode performance improvements - Syncing up to the blockchain by importing all blocks is faster due to improvements in VDF verification speed and multithreading block verification. Also fixed a bug where the node may not sync if it restarts close to a tip.

2. VDF improvements - VDF verification and generation speed has increased and dependence on flint2 has been removed. We wish to thank Dr. William Hart (@wbhart) for dual licensing parts of his contributions in FLINT and Antic for inclusion in the Chia blockchain.

3. Implemented an RPC interface with JSON serialization for streamables - currently on port 8555 - and moved the ssh UI to use RPC.

4. Mongodb deprecated. Moved to SQLite for the blockchain database. This will require nodes to re-sync with the network. Luckily this is now faster.

5. Changed the displayed process names for harvester, farmer, fullnode, timelords, and VDFs to to chia_full node, chia_harvester, etc. Fixed a bug that could cause inadvertent shutdown of other processes like an ongoing plotting session when new chia services were started.

6. Added details on how to contribute in CONTRIBUTING.md. Thanks @RichardLitt. Also moved documentation from inside the repository to the wiki.

7. Added color logging and now chia_harvester will periodically announce which plots it is currently farming and their k sizes.

8. Fixed a typo in the UI. Hat tip to @lvcivs for the pr.

9. Clarified the minimum version of boost required to build timelord/VDFs. Hat tip @AdrianScott

10. Lots of smaller bug and documentation fixes.

Alpha-1.0

This is the first release of the Chia testnet! Blockchain consensus, proof of time, and proof of space are included.
More details on the release at https://www.chia.net/developer/

Alpha 1.2

Chia Blockchain Testnet alpha 1.2 2020-01-08

  1. Performance improvements
     - Removes database access from blockchain, and handles headers instead of blocks
     - Avoid processing blocks and unfinished blocks that we have already seen.
     - Also adds test for load.
  2. Improvements to plotting via lookup table - as much as 15% faster
  3. Fixed a blockchain initialization bug

Alpha 1.1.1

Chia Blockchain Testnet alpha 1.1.1 2019-12-25
Installation is now separated into everything except timelord/vdf and timelord/vdf.
Added install instructions for Windows using WSL and Ubuntu.
Added install instructions for CentOS 7.7.
Added install instructions for Amazon Linux 2.
New install_timelord.sh and replaced VDF server compilation scripts with Makefile.