Kerrigan Core v1.4.0 "Nydus"

Kerrigan Core v1.4.0 "Nydus"

Nydus makes BroodNodes the coordinators of the Kerrigan AI swarm, and carries the quorum, InstantSend and shielded-wallet fixes since v1.3.2. It contains no consensus change and no activation height: upgrade at any time. Every masternode operator should upgrade; BroodNode operators also have the steps below.

Upgrade before block 184000

Kerrigan Core v1.3.2 and earlier stop at block 184000, expected around November 10, 2026, and have been showing a deprecation warning since block 169000. This is the intended end of life for those versions, not a fault: v1.4.0 replaces them and runs until block 290000 (around April 2027). Upgrade any node that shows the warning, including miners, pools and exchanges.

BroodNodes run the AI swarm coordinator

Drones (GPU operators serving AI inference) and inference clients now find coordinators on BroodNodes instead of on a few hosted servers. Serving a coordinator is part of the BroodNode role from this release.

• kerrigand starts kerrigan-coordinator (shipped next to it in the Linux archives) while the node is an enabled BroodNode on a synced chain, restarts it if it exits, and stops it on shutdown. It serves at the addresses the BroodNode registered: the API on the platform_https port (TCP, 7122 on mainnet) and drone connections on the platform_p2p port (UDP, 7121 on mainnet).
• BroodNode operators: open TCP 7122 and UDP 7121, and keep the RPC server on (server=1, the default). Check it with kerrigan-cli getcoordinatorinfo. Its log and database are in <datadir>/coordinator/.
• New options: -coordinator=auto|1|0 (default auto: only on a BroodNode), -coordinatorpath, -coordinatorbind.
• The coordinator is a separate process, so a fault in it cannot stop the node, and it limits requests per client because it answers the internet directly. It reads the node over local RPC with the node's cookie; an RPC password, if set, is passed in its environment and never on the command line.
• Running a coordinator is required of BroodNodes but is not enforced on chain in this release. A later release will enforce it once coordinator availability has been measured across the network.
• The coordinator is supported on Linux (x86_64 and ARM64).

Quorums, ChainLocks and InstantSend

• A masternode no longer bans a peer that relays a DKG message from a non-member. Under load this banned honest relayers and cut quorum connections, which stalled ChainLocks and InstantSend.
• DKG phases drain pending messages at the start of each phase, serve late contributions and complaints only while they can still count, bound their work, and stop early on a duplicate contribution.
• Transactions with no transparent inputs no longer hold up ChainLocks.
• Masternodes no longer sign InstantSend locks for transactions with more than 25 inputs. Such a transaction confirms normally after about 10 minutes, without an InstantSend lock. Large consolidations could previously hold up InstantSend for everyone. Wallets that consolidate many inputs should send them in transactions of 25 inputs or fewer.
• masternode status reports a self-check of the node's own address and the last DKG it took part in (-masternodeselfcheck).

Shielded wallet

• kerrigan-cli and the Qt console now pass the arrays and numbers of the z_* commands correctly, so z_sendmany with recipients and memos works from the command line.
• New z_viewtransaction <txid> shows the shielded outputs a transaction paid to this wallet, with their memos, including notes already spent. It works on a locked wallet and on a viewing-key-only wallet.
• The Qt Send page has a memo field for shielded recipients, and kerrigan: payment links accept memo= (base64url, as in ZIP 321).
• Shielded payments received are now wallet transactions: gettransaction, listtransactions and listsinceblock include them, each received note as a receive entry with "shielded": true. Run rescanblockchain once to list payments received before this version.
• Change from a shielded send is counted at the address that sent it, and can be spent from that address.
• Spent-note bookkeeping uses the chain's nullifiers as the authority, so a restart or reorg cannot leave a spent note counted as spendable.

Upgrading

Stop the daemon, replace the binaries, start it again. No reindex is needed. Verify downloads against SHA256SUMS.