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Andy Watson
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The latest update to the bitcoin reference client, Bitcoin Core, was released on 18st of March.
New version of Bitcoin Core 0.9.0 is now available from the Bitcoin website. This version provides a few new features and some bugs were fixed.
Among the upgrades are faster wallet GUI, improvements to blockchain handling and storage, fixes relating to Transaction Malleability, a lower network relay fee, many protocol changes and optimizations.
And what is more a name was changed to Bitcoin Core. The changes of the brand name were provided in order to reduce confusion between the network, the software, the protocol and the cryotocurrency.
The release was launched on 18st of March at 5 pm. It also conducted the binary building and security signing process in the 24 hours since. The key-signed binaries have been spread to the usual storages at the Bitcoin Project website and Sourceforge.
Mike Hearn, the Bitcoin Core developer, had made the addition of the payment protocol to the version 0.9.0.
Not it is able to create files that contain bitcoin addresses, but also more information that will help the bitcoin user experience grow with user expectations.
“The bitcoin address had no way to add features to that like refunds, security, privacy upgrades, recurring billing, all these great features that people have been talking about for a long time.”, told Hearn.
However, the reaction of cryprocurrency community wasn’t really optimistic. The users of Reddit and Bitcoin Talk forum doubt the quality of the development team and the breadth of the changes. And also they do not believe that the update will last long.
“I am disappointed to see no significant refactoring of the client toward a more modular architecture. It is foreseeable that the reference implementation will evolve to the router of the network while wallet functionality will be taken over by specialized software just like it happened with mining”, told Blummer.
Apart from that, some users prefer to wait and not to hurry-up with download of upgrade until bugs had been addressed.
On the other hand, Mike Hearn, encourages customers of Bitcoin to upgrade as soon as possible, because the changes and fixes of bugs could be very profitable l for the bitcoin ecosystem.
“It’s important that people upgrade, because if we don’t, we won’t be able to lower the transaction relay fees, and obviously the higher the fee is, the less attractive bitcoin is.”, Hearn stated.
To upgrade the system you should to shut down the older version, uninstall it and run the installer (Windows) or copy the application (Mac and Linux).
Earlier versions will need to create new indexes of their blockchain files. The whole process will take between 30 minutes and several hours, more detailed information on reinstallation you can find here.
