All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.
The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to the versioning scheme outlined in the README.md.
This is a consensus-breaking release to address a Clarity VM bug discovered in 2.2.0.0.1. Tx and read-only calls to functions with traits as parameters are rejected with unchecked TypeValueError. Additional context and rationale can be found in SIP-023.
This release is compatible with chainstate directories from 2.1.0.0.x.
This is a consensus-breaking release to address a bug and DoS vector in pox-2's stack-increase
function.
Additional context and rationale can be found in SIP-022.
This release is compatible with chainstate directories from 2.1.0.0.x.
This is a high-priority hotfix release to address a bug in the stacks-node miner logic which could impact miner availability. This release's chainstate directory is compatible with chainstate directories from 2.1.0.0.2.
This software update is a hotfix to resolve improper unlock handling in mempool admission. This release's chainstate directory is compatible with chainstate directories from 2.1.0.0.1.
- Fix mempool admission logic's improper handling of PoX unlocks. This would
cause users to get spurious
NotEnoughFunds
rejections when trying to submit their transactions (#3623)
- Handle the case where a bitcoin node returns zero headers (#3588)
- The default value for
always_use_affirmation_maps
is now set tofalse
, instead oftrue
. This was preventing testnet nodes from reaching the chain tip with the default configuration. - Reduce default poll time of the
chain-liveness
thread which reduces the possibility that a miner thread will get interrupted (#3610).
This is a consensus-breaking release that introduces a lot of new functionality. Details on the how and why can be found in SIP-015, SIP-018, and SIP-20.
The changelog for this release is a high-level summary of these SIPs.
- There is a new
.pox-2
contract for implementing proof-of-transfer. This PoX contract enables re-stacking while the user's STX are locked, and incrementing the amount stacked on top of a locked batch of STX. - The Clarity function
stx-account
has been added, which returns the account's locked and unlocked balances. - The Clarity functions
principal-destruct
andprincipal-construct?
functions have been added, which provide the means to convert between aprincipal
instance and thebuff
s andstring-ascii
s that constitute it. - The Clarity function
get-burn-block-info?
has been added to support fetching the burnchain header hash of any burnchain block starting from the sortition height of the Stacks genesis block, and to support fetching the PoX addresses and rewards paid by miners for a particular burnchain block height. - The Clarity function
slice
has been added for obtaining a sub-sequence of abuff
,string-ascii
,string-utf8
, orlist
. - Clarity functions for converting between
string-ascii
,string-utf8
,uint
, andint
have been added. - Clarity functions for converting between big- and little-endian
buff
representations ofint
anduint
have been added. - The Clarity function
stx-transfer-memo?
has been added, which behaves the same asstx-transfer?
but also takes a memo argument. - The Clarity function
is-standard
has been added to identify whether or not aprincipal
instance is a standard or contract principal. - Clarity functions have been added for converting an arbitrary Clarity type to and from its canonical byte string representation.
- The Clarity function
replace-at?
has been added for replacing a single item in alist
,string-ascii
,string-utf8
, orbuff
. - The Clarity global variable
tx-sponsor?
has been added, which evaluates to the sponsor of the transaction if the transaction is sponsored. - The Clarity global variable
chain-id
has been added, which evaluates to the 4-byte chain ID of this Stacks network. - The Clarity parser has been rewritten to be about 3x faster than the parser in Stacks 2.05.x.x.x.
- Clarity trait semantics have been refined and made more explicit, so as to
avoid certain corner cases where a trait reference might be downgraded to a
principal
in Clarity 1.- Trait values can be passed to compatible sub-trait types
- Traits can be embedded in compound types, e.g.
(optional <my-trait>)
- Traits can be assigned to a let-variable
- Fixes to unexpected behavior in traits
- A trait with duplicate function names is now an error
- Aliased trait names do not interfere with local trait definitions
- The comparison functions
<
,<=
,>
, and>=
now work onstring-ascii
,string-utf8
, andbuff
based on byte-by-byte comparison (note that this is not lexicographic comparison). - It is now possible to call
delegate-stx
from a burnchain transaction, just as it is forstack-stx
andtransfer-stx
.
- The
delegate-stx
function in.pox-2
can be called while the user's STX are locked. - If a batch of STX is not enough to clinch even a single reward slot, then the STX are automatically unlocked at the start of the reward cycle in which they are rendered useless in this capacity.
- The PoX sunset has been removed. PoX rewards will continue in perpetuity.
- Support for segwit and taproot addresses (v0 and v1 witness programs) has been added for Stacking.
- The Clarity function
get-block-info?
now supports querying a block's total burnchain spend by miners who tried to mine it, the spend by the winner, and the total block reward (coinbase plus transaction fees). - A block's coinbase transaction may specify an alternative recipient principal, which can be either a standard or contract principal.
- A smart contract transaction can specify which version of Clarity to use. If no version is given, then the epoch-default version will be used (in Stacks 2.1, this is Clarity 2).
- The Stacks node now includes the number of PoX anchor blocks in its fork-choice rules. The best Stacks fork is the fork that (1) is on the best Bitcoin fork, (2) has the most PoX anchor blocks known, and (3) is the longest.
- On-burnchain operations --
stack-stx
,delegate-stx
, andtransfer-stx
-- can take effect within six (6) burnchain blocks in which they are mined, instead of one. - Transaction fees are debited from accounts before the transaction is processed.
- All smart contract analysis errors are now treated as runtime errors, meaning that smart contract transactions which don't pass analysis will still be mined (so miners get paid for partially validating them).
- The default Clarity version is now 2. Users can opt for version 1 by using the new smart contract transaction wire format and explicitly setting version
- The authorization of a
contract-caller
in.pox-2
for stacking will now expire at the user-specified height, if given. - The Clarity function
principal-of?
now works on mainnet. - One or more late block-commits no longer result in the miner losing its sortition weight.
- Documentation will indicate explicitly which Clarity version introduced each keyword or function.
- The
/v2/neighbors
endpoint now reports a node's bootstrap peers, so other nodes can find high-quality nodes to boot from (#3401) - If there are two or more Stacks chain tips that are tied for the canonical tip, the node deterministically chooses one independent of the arrival order (#3419).
- If Stacks blocks for a different fork arrive out-of-order and, in doing so, constitute a better fork than the fork the node considers canonical, the node will update the canonical Stacks tip pointer in the sortition DB before processing the next sortition (#3419).
- The node keychain no longer maintains any internal state, but instead derives keys based on the chain tip the miner is building off of. This prevents the node from accidentally producing an invalid block that reuses a microblock public key hash (#3387).
- If a node mines an invalid block for some reason, it will no longer stall forever. Instead, it will detect that its last-mined block is not the chain tip, and resume mining (#3406).
- The new minimum Rust version is 1.61
- The act of walking the mempool will now cache address nonces in RAM and to a temporary mempool table used for the purpose, instead of unconditionally querying them from the chainstate MARF. This builds upon improvements to mempool goodput over 2.05.0.4.0 (#3337).
- The node and miner implementation has been refactored to remove write-lock contention that can arise when the node's chains-coordinator thread attempts to store and process newly-discovered (or newly-mined) blocks, and when the node's relayer thread attempts to mine a new block. In addition, the miner logic has been moved to a separate thread in order to avoid starving the relayer thread (which must handle block and transaction propagation, as well as block-processing). The refactored miner thread will be preemptively terminated and restarted by the arrival of new Stacks blocks or burnchain blocks, which further prevents the miner from holding open write-locks in the underlying chainstate databases when there is new chain data to discover (which would invalidate the miner's work anyway). (#3335).
- Fixed
pow
documentation in Clarity (#3338). - Backported unit tests that were omitted in the 2.05.0.3.0 release (#3348).
- Denormalize the mempool database so as to remove a
LEFT JOIN
from the SQL query for choosing transactions in order by estimated fee rate. This drastically speeds up mempool transaction iteration in the miner (#3314)
- Added prometheus output for "transactions in last block" (#3138).
- Added envrionement variable STACKS_LOG_FORMAT_TIME to set the time format stacks-node uses for logging. (#3219) Example: STACKS_LOG_FORMAT_TIME="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" cargo stacks-node
- Added mock-miner sample config (#3225)
- Updates to the logging of transaction events (#3139).
- Moved puppet-chain to
./contrib/tools
directory and disabled compiling by default (#3200)
- Make it so that a new peer private key in the config file will propagate to the peer database (#3165).
- Fixed default miner behavior regarding block assembly attempts. Previously, the miner would only attempt to assemble a larger block after their first attempt (by Bitcoin RBF) if new microblock or block data arrived. This changes the miner to always attempt a second block assembly (#3184).
- Fixed a bug in the node whereby the node would encounter a deadlock when processing attachment requests before the P2P thread had started (#3236).
- Fixed a bug in the P2P state machine whereby it would not absorb all transient errors from sockets, but instead propagate them to the outer caller. This would lead to a node crash in nodes connected to event observers, which expect the P2P state machine to only report fatal errors (#3228)
- Spawn the p2p thread before processing number of sortitions. Fixes issue (#3216) where sync from genesis paused (#3236)
- Drop well-formed "problematic" transactions that result in miner performance degradation (#3212)
- Ignore blocks that include problematic transactions
- Fixed a security bug in the SPV client whereby the chain work was not being considered at all when determining the canonical Bitcoin fork. The SPV client now only accepts a new Bitcoin fork if it has a higher chain work than any other previously-seen chain (#3152).
Please read the following WARNINGs in their entirety before upgrading.
WARNING: Please be aware that using this node on chainstate prior to this release will cause the node to spend up to 30 minutes migrating the data to a new schema. Depending on the storage medium, this may take even longer.
WARNING: This migration process cannot be interrupted. If it is, the chainstate will be irrecovarably corrupted and require a sync from genesis.
WARNING: You will need at least 2x the disk space for the migration to work. This is because a copy of the chainstate will be made in the same directory in order to apply the new schema.
It is highly recommended that you back up your chainstate before running this version of the software on it.
- The MARF implementation will now defer calculating the root hash of a new trie until the moment the trie is committed to disk. This avoids gratuitous hash calculations, and yields a performance improvement of anywhere between 10x and 200x (#3041).
- The MARF implementation will now store tries to an external file for instances where the tries are expected to exceed the SQLite page size (namely, the Clarity database). This improves read performance by a factor of 10x to 14x (#3059).
- The MARF implementation may now cache trie nodes in RAM if directed to do so by an environment variable (#3042).
- Sortition processing performance has been improved by about an order of magnitude, by avoiding a slew of expensive database reads (#3045).
- Updated chains coordinator so that before a Stacks block or a burn block is processed, an event is sent through the event dispatcher. This fixes #3015.
- Expose a node's public key and public key hash160 (i.e. what appears in /v2/neighbors) via the /v2/info API endpoint (#3046)
- Reduced the default subsequent block attempt timeout from 180 seconds to 30 seconds, based on benchmarking the new MARF performance data during a period of network congestion (#3098)
- The
blockstack-core
binary has been renamed tostacks-inspect
. This binary provides CLI tools for chain and mempool inspection.
- A new fee estimator intended to produce fewer over-estimates, by having less sensitivity to outliers. Its characteristic features are: 1) use a window to forget past estimates instead of exponential averaging, 2) use weighted percentiles, so that bigger transactions influence the estimates more, 3) assess empty space in blocks as having paid the "minimum fee", so that empty space is accounted for, 4) use random "fuzz" so that in busy times the fees can change dynamically. (#2972)
- Implements anti-entropy protocol for querying transactions from other nodes' mempools. Before, nodes wouldn't sync mempool contents with one another. (#2884)
- Structured logging in the mining code paths. This will shine light on what happens to transactions (successfully added, skipped or errored) that the miner considers while buildings blocks. (#2975)
- Added the mined microblock event, which includes information on transaction events that occurred in the course of mining (will provide insight on whether a transaction was successfully added to the block, skipped, or had a processing error). (#2975)
- For v2 endpoints, can now specify the
tip
parameter tolatest
. Iftip=latest
, the node will try to run the query off of the latest tip. (#2778) - Adds the /v2/headers endpoint, which returns a sequence of SIP-003-encoded block headers and consensus hashes (see the ExtendedStacksHeader struct that this PR adds to represent this data). (#2862)
- Adds the /v2/data_var endpoint, which returns a contract's data variable value and a MARF proof of its existence. (#2862)
- Fixed a bug in the unconfirmed state processing logic that could lead to a denial of service (node crash) for nodes that mine microblocks (#2970)
- Added prometheus metric that tracks block fullness by logging the percentage of each cost dimension that is consumed in a given block (#3025).
- Updated the mined block event. It now includes information on transaction events that occurred in the course of mining (will provide insight on whether a transaction was successfully added to the block, skipped, or had a processing error). (#2975)
- Updated some of the logic in the block assembly for the miner and the follower
to consolidate similar logic. Added functions
setup_block
andfinish_block
. (#2946) - Makes the p2p state machine more reactive to newly-arrived
BlocksAvailable
andMicroblocksAvailable
messages for block and microblock streams that this node does not have. If such messages arrive during an inventory sync, the p2p state machine will immediately transition from the inventory sync work state to the block downloader work state, and immediately proceed to fetch the available block or microblock stream. (#2862) - Nodes will push recently-obtained blocks and microblock streams to outbound neighbors if their cached inventories indicate that they do not yet have them (#2986).
- Nodes will no longer perform full inventory scans on their peers, except during boot-up, in a bid to minimize block-download stalls (#2986).
- Nodes will process sortitions in parallel to downloading the Stacks blocks for a reward cycle, instead of doing these tasks sequentially (#2986).
- The node's runloop will coalesce and expire stale requests to mine blocks on top of parent blocks that are no longer the chain tip (#2969).
- Several database indexes have been updated to avoid table scans, which significantly improves most RPC endpoint speed and cuts node spin-up time in half (#2989, #3005).
- Fixed a rare denial-of-service bug whereby a node that processes a very deep burnchain reorg can get stuck, and be rendered unable to process further sortitions. This has never happened in production, but it can be replicated in tests (#2989).
- Updated what indices are created, and ensures that indices are created even after the database is initialized (#3029).
- Updates the lookup key for contracts in the pessimistic cost estimator. Before, contracts published by different principals with the same name would have had the same key in the cost estimator. (#2984)
- Fixed a few prometheus metrics to be more accurate compared to
/v2
endpoints when polling data (#2987) - Fixed an error message from the type-checker that shows up when the type of a parameter refers to a trait defined in the same contract (#3064).
This software update is a consensus changing release and the implementation of the proposed cost changes in SIP-012. This release's chainstate directory is compatible with chainstate directories from 2.0.11.4.0. However, this release is only compatible with chainstate directories before the 2.05 consensus changes activate (Bitcoin height 713,000). If you run a 2.00 stacks-node beyond this point, and wish to run a 2.05 node afterwards, you must start from a new chainstate directory.
- At height 713,000 a new
costs-2
contract will be launched by the Stacks boot address.
- Stacks blocks whose parents are mined >= 713,000 will use default costs
from the new
costs-2
contract. - Stacks blocks whose parents are mined >= 713,000 will use the real serialized length of Clarity values as the cost inputs to several methods that previously used the maximum possible size for the associated types.
- Stacks blocks whose parents are mined >= 713,000 will use the new block limit defined in SIP-012.
- Miners are now more aggressive in calculating their block limits when confirming microblocks (#2916)
This software update is a point-release to change the transaction selection logic in the default miner to prioritize by an estimated fee rate instead of raw fee. This release's chainstate directory is compatible with chainstate directories from 2.0.11.3.0.
- FeeEstimator and CostEstimator interfaces. These can be controlled
via node configuration options. See the
README.md
for more information on the configuration. - New fee rate estimation endpoint
/v2/fees/transaction
(#2872). Seedocs/rpc/openapi.yaml
for more information.
- Prioritize transaction inclusion in blocks by estimated fee rates (#2859).
- MARF sqlite connections will now use
mmap
'ed connections with up to 256MB space (#2869).
This software update is a point-release to change the transaction selection logic in the default miner to prioritize by fee instead of nonce sequence. This release's chainstate directory is compatible with chainstate directories from 2.0.11.2.0.
- The node will enforce a soft deadline for mining a block, so that a node
operator can control how frequently their node attempts to mine a block
regardless of how congested the mempool is. The timeout parameters are
controlled in the
[miner]
section of the node's config file (#2823).
- Prioritize transaction inclusion in the mempool by transaction fee (#2823).
NOTE: This change resets the testnet
. Users running a testnet node will need
to reset their chain states.
clarity-cli
will now also print a serialized version of the resulting output fromeval
andexecute
commands. This serialization is in hexademical string format and supports integration with other tools. (#2684)- The creation of a Bitcoin wallet with BTC version
> 0.19
is now supported on a private testnet. (#2647) lcov
-compatible coverage reporting has been added toclarity-cli
for Clarity contract testing. (#2592)- The
README.md
file has new documentation about the release process. (#2726)
- This change resets the testnet. (#2742)
- Caching has been added to speed up
/v2/info
responses. (#2746)
- PoX syncing will only look back to the reward cycle prior to divergence, instead of looking back over all history. This will speed up running a follower node. (#2746)
- The UTXO staleness check is re-ordered so that it occurs before the RBF-limit check. This way, if stale UTXOs reached the "RBF limit" a miner will recover by resetting the UTXO cache. (#2694)
- Microblock events were being sent to the event observer when microblock data was received by a peer, but were not emitted if the node mined the microblocks itself. This made something like the private-testnet setup incapable of emitting microblock events. Microblock events are now sent even when self-mined. (#2653)
- A bug is fixed in the mocknet/helium miner that would lead to a panic if a burn block occurred without a sortition in it. (#2711)
- Two bugs that caused problems syncing with the bitcoin chain during a bitcoin reorg have been fixed (#2771, #2780).
- Documentation is fixed in cases where string and buffer types are allowed but not covered in the documentation. (#2676)
This software update is our monthly release. It introduces fixes and features for both developers and miners. This release's chainstate directory is compatible with chainstate directories from 2.0.11.0.0.
/new_microblock
endpoint to notify event observers when a valid microblock has been received (#2571).- Added new features to
clarity-cli
(#2597) - Exposing new mining-related metrics in prometheus (#2664)
- Miner's computed relative miner score as a percentage
- Miner's computed commitment, the min of their previous commitment and their median commitment
- Miner's current median commitment
- Add
key-for-seed
command to thestacks-node
binary - outputs the associated secret key hex string and WIF formatted secret key for a given "seed" value (#2658).
- Improved mempool walk order (#2514).
- Renamed database
tx_tracking.db
totx_tracking.sqlite
(#2666).
- Alter the miner to prioritize spending the most recent UTXO when building a transaction, instead of the largest UTXO. In the event of a tie, it uses the smallest UTXO first (#2661).
- Fix trait rpc lookups for implicitly implemented traits (#2602).
- Fix
v2/pox
endpoint, broken on Mocknet (#2634). - Align cost limits on mocknet, testnet and mainnet (#2660).
- Log peer addresses in the HTTP server (#2667)
- Mine microblocks if there are no recent unprocessed Stacks blocks
The chainstate directory has been restructured in this release. It is not compatible with prior chainstate directories.
/drop_mempool_tx
endpoint to notify event observers when a mempool transaction has been removed the mempool."reward_slot_holders"
field to thenew_burn_block
event- CTRL-C handler for safe shutdown of
stacks-node
- Log transactions in local db table via setting env
STACKS_TRANSACTION_LOG=1
- New prometheus metrics for mempool transaction processing times and outstanding mempool transactions
- New RPC endpoint with path
/v2/traits/contractAddr/contractName/traitContractName /traitContractAddr/traitName
to determine whether a given trait is implemented within the specified contract (either explicitly or implicitly). - Re-activate the Atlas network for propagating and storing transaction attachments. This re-enables off-chain BNS name storage.
- Re-activate microblock mining.
- Improved chainstate directory layout
- Improved node boot up time
- Better handling of flash blocks
- The
/v2/pox
RPC endpoint was updated to include more useful information about the current and next PoX cycles. For details, seedocs/rpc-endpoints.md
- Fixed faulty logic in the mempool that was still treating the transaction fee as a fee rate, which prevented replace-by-fee from working as expected.
This is a low-priority hotfix release to address a bug in the deserialization logic. The chainstate directory of 2.0.10.0.1 is compatible with 2.0.10. This release also begins the usage of the versioning scheme outlined in the README.md.
This is a low-priority hotfix release to address two bugs in the block downloader. The chainstate directory of 2.0.10 is compatible with 2.0.9. If booting up a node from genesis, or an existing node has stalled in downloading blocks, this hotfix is necessary for your node.
- Bug in microblocks inventory vector calculation that included invalidated microblocks as present bit. This bug will impact nodes booting up from genesis, but not affect nodes currently running at the chain tip (#2518).
- Bug in microblocks downloader logic that would cause the stacks-node to fail to wake-up to process newly arrived microblocks in certain instances (#2491).
This is a hotfix release for improved handling of arriving Stacks blocks through both the RPC interface and the P2P ineterface. The chainstate directory of 2.0.9 is compatible with the 2.0.8 chainstate.
- TOCTTOU bug fixed in the chain processing logic that, which now ensures that an arriving Stacks block is processed at most once.
This is a hotfix release for improved handling of static analysis storage and
improved at-block
behavior. The chainstate directory of 2.0.8 is compatible with
the 2.0.7 chainstate.
- Improved static analysis storage
at-block
behavior inclarity-cli
and unit tests (no changes instacks-node
behavior).
This is an emergency hotfix that prevents the node from accidentally deleting valid block data if its descendant microblock stream is invalid for some reason.
- Do not delete a valid parent Stacks block.
The database schema has not changed since 2.0.5, so when spinning up a 2.0.6 node from a 2.0.5 chainstate, you do not need to use a fresh working directory. Earlier versions' chainstate directories are incompatible, however.
- Miner RBF logic has two "fallback" logic changes. First, if the RBF logic has increased fees by more than 50%, do not submit a new transaction. Second, fix the "same chainstate hash" fallback check.
- Winning block txid lookups in the SortitionDB have been corrected to use the txid during the lookup.
- The miner will no longer attempt to mine a new Stacks block if it receives a microblock in a discontinuous microblock stream.
The database schema has changed since 2.0.4, so when spinning up a 2.0.5 node from an earlier chainstate, you must use a fresh working directory.
- Miner heuristic for handling relatively large or computationally expensive transactions: such transactions will be dropped from the mempool to prevent miners from re-attempting them once they fail. Miners can also now continue processing transactions that are behind those transactions in the mempool "queue".
- Miner block assembly now uses the correct block limit available via the node config
tx_fees_streamed_produced
fees are included in miner coinbase events for event observers- SQLite indexes are now correctly created on database instantion
- STX unlock events are now sent over the events endpoint bundled into an associated unlock transaction
- Atlas attachments networking endpoints are disabled for this release, while networking issues are addressed in the implementation
- Atlas attachments networking endpoints are disabled for this release, while networking issues are addressed in the implementation.
stacks-node --mine-at-height
commandline option, which tells thestacks-node
not to mine until it has synchronized to the given Stacks block height- A new RPC endpoint
/v2/blocks/upload/{consensus_hash}
that accepts an uploaded a Stacks block for a given sortition
- Enabled WAL mode for the chainstate databases. This allows much more
concurrency in the
stacks-node
, and improves network performance across the board. NOTE: This changed the database schema, any running node would need to re-initialize their nodes from a new chain state when upgrading. - Default value
wait_time_for_microblocks
: from 60s to 30s - The mempool now performs more transfer semantics checks before admitting a transaction (e.g., reject if origin = recipient): see issue #2354
- Improved the performance of the code that handles
GetBlocksInv
p2p messages by an order of magnitude. - Improved the performance of the block-downloader's block and microblock search code by a factor of 5x.
- Miner mempool querying now works across short-lived forks: see issue #2389
- JSON deserialization for high-depth JSON objects
- Atlas attachment serving: see PR #2390
- Address issues #2379, #2356, #2347, #2346. The tracking of the
LeaderBlockCommit
operations inflight is improved, drastically reducing the number of block commit rejections. When aLeaderBlockCommit
is not included in the Bitcoin block it was targeting, it is condemned to be rejected, per the Stacks consensus. To avoid wasting BTC, the miner now tries to send its nextLeaderBlockCommit
operations using the UTXOs of the previous transaction with a replacement by fee. The fee increase increments can be configured with the settingrbf_fee_increment
.