Litecoin’s New v0.18.0 Upgrade Brings It Closer in Line With Latest Bitcoin Update
Litecoin released its new update on June 11, quelling fears that development was not undergoing at the project that’s been around 2014.
Litecoin’s Got New Features
As stated on Github, Litecoin’s latest v0.18.0 update brings refinements to block and transaction handling, has optimized the network code and P2P protocol, brings forth new RPCs, and features over a 100 new changes and advancements.
The GUI, wallet, and other user-facing protocols have received a facelift, as developer Adrian Gallagher noted. Litecoin Core is supported on Linux kernel, macOS 10.10+, and all versions after Windows 7. Extensive tests have been conducted on each software protocol.
Listed below are some takeaways from the extensive blogpost:
Calls to “getblocktemplate” will fail if the segwit rule is not specified in the new mining format. An error message describing how to enable segwit will act as a troubleshoot for newer users.
The “rpcpassword” option now causes a startup error if unknown characters, such as a hash (#) are input. The blog noted this is because it’s ambiguous whether the hash character is meant for the password or as a comment.
A new document introduces Litecoin Core’s BIP174 Partially-Signed Litecoin Transactions (PSBT) interface, which is used to allow multiple programs to collaboratively work to create, sign, and broadcast new transactions.
Litecoin’s blog explained the above:
“This is useful for offline (cold storage) wallets, multisig wallets, coinjoin implementations, and many other cases where two or more programs need to interact to generate a complete transaction.”
“settxfee” previously silently ignored attempts to set the fee below the allowed minimums. It now prints a warning. The special value of “0” may still be used to request the minimum value
“unloadwallet” is now synchronous, meaning it will not return until the wallet is fully unloaded. On the other hand, “createwallet” now has an optional blank argument that can be used to create a blank wallet. Blank wallets do not have any keys or HD seed and cannot be opened in software older than 0.18.
Available on Github
Those interested in the new Litecoin version can visit the download page here. Alternatively, a download folder is available here.
Litecoin said the version was heavily tested, but “may still contain bugs.” Backup of all wallet.dat file before upgrading is advised, and a bug reporting section is now live on Github.
Litecoin founder Charlie Lee, on Twitter, congratulated the project’s developers. He also added that Litecoin Core 0.20 was “already in the pipeline” and its release would bring the Litecoin blockchain “in line with the latest Bitcoin Core code.”
