Dogecoin Dev Blog

Official blog for on-going development of Dogecoin

[dogecoin]

Dogecoin Core 1.8 released - Mandatory upgrade!

Hey shibes!  

It's done! Today we are here to release Dogecoin Core 1.8 as the final release. I will start with a TL;DR of the release notes.I'd recommend everyone reading them, especially if you are a service provider.  

Release notes  

AuxPoW

Starting with block 371,337 the Dogecoin network will accept AuxPoW blocks from miners of other chains.

Upgrading

Please always make a backup of your wallet.dat! The Qt wallet will prompt you to do a reindex at first start after the upgrade. It's mandatory to do this and will take about 30-60 minutes to complete depending on your machine. If you run dogecoind, you have to start with `-reindex` once manually. To ensure a smooth switchover to AuxPoW, 1.8 has safe mode disabled 1 hour before until 24 hours after the switch block. This ensures the actually legit fork will not trigger safe mode and halt mining. If you don't want to have this behavior, then refer to the 1.8-safemode branch. This one doesn't include the patch to disable safe mode.  

Downgrading  

Only possible with a complete fresh resync, but remmeber that at the switchover block you have to be on 1.8!  

AuxPoW and mining

Depends on your pool if they implement AuxPoW. Powerpool and p2pool support it. A NOMP fork was found and is being worked on. Look for news from your pools for this :)  

Payment Protocol

Dogecoin Core 1.8 adds payment protocol support, which is used to streamline payments being made to merchants.  

Transaction fees 

To have consistent fees, all transactions have a base fee now which constinues to be 1 DOGE.  

RPC

If you use `rpcallowip`, make sure to use CIDR notation instead of wildcards. `192.168.*.*` becomes `192.168/16`. 

More?

See linked release notes :)  

Is this mandatory?

Yes, this is a mandatory update! The switchover block is projected to happen around September 12th. You have to update before then!  

Downloads

Downloads are available from: https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/releases/tag/v1.8.0  

and of course from http://dogecoin.com/  

How do I update?

Backup your wallet! This is very important! Go to File -> Backup Wallet, and save this file in at least two safe places for a good backup.  

Exit the client you're running now.  

Install the update   For Windows, use the setup.exe to update. For Mac just overwrite the version you currently have in you Applications folder.   For Linux you'd overwrite your current dogecoin-qt binary with the new one.  

Start the client, confirm the reindex prompt and wait. That's it :)  

Other wallets? 

Will follow soon. You'll get an update notification, as both Android wallet and MultiDoge have that built in :)  

Questions?

Ask on the linked post and we try our best to answer them all :) I also probably forgot some stuff here so will edit it in when I remember :D  

Thanks

Again thanks to everyone who contributed to this release and also thanks to everyone who contributed to the dev fund!

Click the linked post for more info!

[dogecoin]

Dogecoin Core 1.7.0 released - Everything you need to know

The Dogecoin developers are proud to announce the final version of Dogecoin Core 1.7!

After lots of coding, testing and swearing this is the next version of our reference client. It brings Dogecoin one big step forward on the technical side of things, with moving to the Bitcoin 0.9 codebase.

The full release notes are available here: https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/releases/tag/v1.7.0

TL;DR of the release notes

Code is now based on Bitcoin source. But parameters are still the same as before. No fork this time ;)

Downgrading from 1.7 to 1.6 with a fresh wallet is not easy. Be aware of that.

Client is now Dogecoin Core, added dogecoin-cli to talk to dogecoind (Dogecoin Core Daemon).

Fork detection and warning

[dogecoin]

Mandatory Update: Dogecoin 1.6

Note: This is a mandatory update as it involves a hard fork of the network. Please make sure you are running 1.6 to ensure that you're on the correct blockchain and not at risk of losing your DOGE

As per block 145k, the network will hardfork to adopt a new difficulty retargeting algorithm.

Download links:

Windows (zip)

Windows (installer)

Mac (zip)

Update highlights:

No longer a random block reward - we now only have static blocks. The current reward will be 250,000 Doge per block, with the halvening dropping us to 125,000 Doge per block, etc etc. This will prevent block cherry-picking; as we're seeing at the moment, with our community pools only seeing 100-200k blocks, while the multi's gaming the system are enjoying 300-500k blocks. From the 1.6 update, all blocks will be completely even.

The DigiShield difficulty algorithm: again, developed and contributed by the very clever folks at reddit.com/r/DigiByte , this allows for rapid block retarget times, and rapid recovery from multipools suddenly hitting the network; meaning that our miners will no longer suffer from extremely long block times if a Multipool does decide to jump on board. This new algorithm will retarget our block times much faster - ensuring the hard-mining shibe is not left holding the bag after the multipool ransack.

Coins mined must mature for 4 hours (previously 30 minutes) before being spent. This is a precautionary measure, to give everyone more time to communicate following any future fork of the network.

For a complete history of all commits, please check the repository history. A big shout out to everyone who made this release possible, and happy digging shibes! :)

Read more about this release on Reddit or Check it out on Github

[dogecoin]

Dogecoin Release 1.5.2

This minor release implements a checkpoint to ensure clients are on the correct blockchain, following a recent pre-1.5 fork that was created.

Updating is not mandatory, but highly recommended. Do not run any pre-1.5 version of Dogecoin, as you may end up on the incorrect fork

Download and update at: https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/releases/tag/1.5.2

[dogecoin]

Dogecoin 1.5.1 release - upgrade now!

dogecoin - very currency

We're happy to announce the release of Dogecoin version 1.5.1!

This release incorporates a range of updates from community contributers, some much needed bug fixes, plus some cool treats brought down-stream from the recent Bitcoin 0.9 release candidate.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this release possible, the entire community appreciates it. We recommend all users update to the latest version and please report any issues you may encounter. As always, backup your wallet.dat file before updating (just to be safe).

Downloads:

Windows installer

Windows archive

Mac OS X app

Release highlights:

Switched to Boost 1.55 to fix network connectivity issues on Windows

Removal of reliance on IRC for discovering nodes

Support for URL protocol, eg. dogecoin:addr?amount=xxx&(see Bitcoin’s implementation)

Ability to automatically look up transactions on Dogechain from your client

Working Windows setup script and installer

Opt-in debug logging via -debuglog (to save disk space and stop constant writing)

Fixed Mac Splashscreen’s greedy desktop behavior

Reimplemented testnet, fixing RPC crash due to no genesis block being present

Allow user to load any wallet from data directory specified using -wallet=mywallet.dat

Updated to LevelDB 1.15 to address blockchain database corruption issues

Allow user to send change only to specified address(es) using -change= (one -change parameter per address)

Fixed RPC difficulty look up

Enjoy!

[dogecoin]

v1.5 of Dogecoin released!

We're happy to announce the v1.5 release of Dogecoin. This major release moves Dogecoin up to match the latest Litecoin code base and includes several other tweaks to improve sync times dramatically.

We recommend all users update to v1.5 immediately. To update, simply overwrite your existing Dogecoin install. As always, please make regular backups of your wallet.dat file.

Please note that due to a change in the database engine being used, a reindex will be required initially off your previously downloaded blockchain data - this should be quick however, and a full blockchain resync should not be needed. If you experience issues getting the client to sync: please close the client, delete all files from your data directory (except wallet.dat), and try opening the client again.

For any other issues encountered, please report them on Github.

Download the binaries

Changelog:

Updated code base to Litecoin 0.8.6.2 (inherits all Litecoin updates since 0.6.*). Highlights include:

New database engine for block storage resulting in faster index/sync times

Implements txindex, reindex and walletnotify

Coin control options for advanced users

Overall increased stability

A range of security fixes

Graphical tweaks, including splash screen

New official DNS seed added (seed.dogecoin.com) for improved sync times

Updated PROTOCOL_VERSION for better node detection

New alert keys to allow for network-wide alert notification in future

Linux binaries will be distributed shortly, stay tuned

[dogecoin]

Testers needed: We've just released Alpha 2 of Dogecoin-Qt 1.5 for testing (Windows + Mac builds included!)

We've been making great progress on the upcoming v1.5 release of Dogecoin. Thanks to everyone who's contributed so far, and a big shout out to /u/voidref on the Mac development side.

We're already seeing much faster sync times, and improved stability. Please report any issues over on Github, pull requests are encouraged. As previously stated, these builds are in "alpha" so use at your own risk.

Download the binaries here.

Changelog

Updated code base to Litecoin 0.8.6.2

Graphical tweaks, including splash screen

Updated PROTOCOL_VERSION for better node detection

New alert keys to allow for network-wide alert notification in future

[dogecoin]

Windows 1.4.1 Update Released

We're happy to announce the release of version 1.4.1 of the Dogecoin QT client for Windows! This Windows-only release fixes the bug causing wallets to crash on encryption and other RPC commands. A massive thanks goes to developer and community member psedik, who claims a total bounty of 200k DOGE (as originally promised by the founders), including nearly 50k from your kind donations over at the Dogecoin Foundation. If you're a Windows user, make sure you download the update here.

[dogecoin]

Houston, we have a problem. The current dogechain over 1.4gb in size. This is incredibly bloated. As time goes on, the size of the blockchain will ...

Redditor Tuxedage has helped pool together a whopping bounty of 1.5 million DOGE (and growing) for the first person to create an electrum/multibit style client for Dogecoin.

If you haven't heard of these before, they're a "light" wallet client that holds your wallet's private keys on your desktop (so still secure) but doesn't require a local copy of the entire blockchain in order to process transactions. That means new users can avoid those hour long initial sync times, while retaining their security.

Head on over to the Reddit thread to offer your help, or donate to the bounty pool. Let's make this happen shibes!

[dogecoin]

Important: Update to Dogecoin 1.4 now

Dogecoin has been updated to v1.4, adding checkpoints for the correct blockchain fork. Please update your clients and daemons immediately.

Windows

Mac OS X

Source on Github

To update, simply download the new version from the download link above. Open the downloaded file and extract the contents of the downloaded file into any new folder or location on your computer.

You don't have to remove your folder containing the old version of the wallet.

For more details on the blockchain fork or to ask any questions, please view this post on the /r/dogecoin subreddit.