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Merge #464: Releases: 0.15.1 release notes and announcement
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61226b3 release 0.15.1: fix travis failure (MeshCollider)
23e55ea 0.15.1 release: add hashes for verification (MeshCollider)
75d35e2 Add 0.15.1 release: blog post and release notes (MeshCollider)

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119 changes: 119 additions & 0 deletions _posts/en/posts/2017-11-11-release-0.15.1.md
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---
title: Bitcoin Core 0.15.1 Released
name: blog-release-0.15.1
id: en-blog-release-0.15.1
lang: en
permalink: /en/2017/11/11/release-0.15.1/
type: posts
layout: post
share: true
version: 1

excerpt: The latest stable version of Bitcoin Core is now available.
---
{% include _toc.html %}
{% include _references.md %}

We are pleased to announce the release of Bitcoin Core 0.15.1.

This release focuses on the safety of the P2P network as a precaution against potential future network forks, as well as bringing bug fixes, optimisations and improvements to the 0.15.x series.

## Notable changes

### Network fork safety enhancements

A number of changes to the way Bitcoin Core deals with peer connections and invalid blocks
have been made, as a safety precaution against blockchain forks and misbehaving peers.

- Unrequested blocks with less work than the minimum-chain-work are now no longer processed even
if they have more work than the tip (a potential issue during IBD where the tip may have low-work).
This prevents peers wasting the resources of a node.

- Peers which provide a chain with less work than the minimum-chain-work during IBD will now be disconnected.

- For a given outbound peer, we now check whether their best known block has at least as much work as our tip. If it
doesn't, and if we still haven't heard about a block with sufficient work after a 20 minute timeout, then we send
a single getheaders message, and wait 2 more minutes. If after two minutes their best known block has insufficient
work, we disconnect that peer. We protect 4 of our outbound peers from being disconnected by this logic to prevent
excessive network topology changes as a result of this algorithm, while still ensuring that we have a reasonable
number of nodes not known to be on bogus chains.

- Outbound (non-manual) peers that serve us block headers that are already known to be invalid (other than compact
block announcements, because BIP 152 explicitly permits nodes to relay compact blocks before fully validating them)
will now be disconnected.

- If the chain tip has not been advanced for over 30 minutes, we now assume the tip may be stale and will try to connect
to an additional outbound peer. A periodic check ensures that if this extra peer connection is in use, we will disconnect
the peer that least recently announced a new block.

- The set of all known invalid-themselves blocks (i.e. blocks which we attempted to connect but which were found to be
invalid) are now tracked and used to check if new headers build on an invalid chain. This ensures that everything that
descends from an invalid block is marked as such.

### RPC changes

- The `currentblocksize` value in `getmininginfo` has been removed.

- `dumpwallet` no longer allows overwriting files. This is a security measure as well as prevents dangerous user mistakes.

- `backupwallet` will now fail when attempting to backup to source file, rather than destroying the wallet.

- `listsinceblock` will now throw an error if an unknown `blockhash` argument value is passed, instead of returning a list
of all wallet transactions since the genesis block. The behaviour is unchanged when an empty string is provided.

### Miner block size limiting deprecated

Though blockmaxweight has been preferred for limiting the size of blocks returned by
getblocktemplate since 0.13.0, blockmaxsize remained as an option for those who wished
to limit their block size directly. Using this option resulted in a few UI issues as
well as non-optimal fee selection and ever-so-slightly worse performance, and has thus
now been deprecated. Further, the blockmaxsize option is now used only to calculate an
implied blockmaxweight, instead of limiting block size directly. Any miners who wish
to limit their blocks by size, instead of by weight, will have to do so manually by
removing transactions from their block template directly.

### GUI settings backed up on reset

The GUI settings will now be written to `guisettings.ini.bak` in the data directory before wiping them when
the `-resetguisettings` argument is used. This can be used to retroactively troubleshoot issues due to the
GUI settings.

### Duplicate wallets disallowed

Previously, it was possible to open the same wallet twice by manually copying the wallet file, causing
issues when both were opened simultaneously. It is no longer possible to open copies of the same wallet.

### Debug `-minimumchainwork` argument added

A hidden debug argument `-minimumchainwork` has been added to allow a custom minimum work value to be used
when validating a chain.

## Conclusion

Please see the [release notes][] for details. To download, please visit
the [download page][].

If have any questions, please stop by either our [IRC][] or [Slack][]
chatrooms and we'll do our best to help you.

## Hashes for verification

{% highlight text %}
d64d2e27cad78bbd2a0268bdaa9efa3f1eca670a4fab462b5e851699c780e3a0 bitcoin-0.15.1-aarch64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
ceba092c9a390082ff184c8d82a24bc34d7f9b421dc5c1e6847fcf769541f305 bitcoin-0.15.1-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz
231e4c9f5cf4ba977dbaf118bf38b0fde4d50ab7b9efd65bee6647fb14035a2c bitcoin-0.15.1-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz
b6771c5d67fb6b9c4882cc351e579470a008211d76407155e544b28b00fcd711 bitcoin-0.15.1-osx64.tar.gz
0ce5ca1ba424603526d8a40d9321f1f735797a7205a7fbbe39561c078f2a0858 bitcoin-0.15.1-osx.dmg
34de2dbe058c1f8b6464494468ebe2ff0422614203d292da1c6458d6f87342b4 bitcoin-0.15.1.tar.gz
cc7a31d8fece1462955bddef87945420721e42cfe6af589a36547b0940851765 bitcoin-0.15.1-win32-setup.exe
4d2ad1371df1904367955d3f250212d0edd9f338c26d5cd60d7d8ce3f1733f5a bitcoin-0.15.1-win32.zip
905a5999fb52b083d7e3bedb2dc6704ca641823f81865db58a55a6a20b454d8c bitcoin-0.15.1-win64-setup.exe
b858521496c0d7699a6916c20767cdb123eb39be70ffc544d6876b08af3b696a bitcoin-0.15.1-win64.zip
387c2e12c67250892b0814f26a5a38f837ca8ab68c86af517f975a2a2710225b bitcoin-0.15.1-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
{% endhighlight %}


[release notes]: /en/releases/0.15.1/
[IRC]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/IRC_channels
[Slack]: https://slack.bitcoincore.org/
[download page]: /en/download
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