v0.7.3: Bitcoin's Proof of Stake

We're pleased to announce 0.7.3, named by @trueptolemy

Note: new dependency gettext is now required when building from source.

[Note2: This release incorrectly discards many node_announcements: the script insert-unknown-nodes.sh fixes this with the help of node-announces.tar.xz]

Highlights for Users

• lightningd now supports different SQL backends. This release includes a PostgresSQL driver, in addition to the default sqlite3 driver.
• Ability to supply a Bitcoin address to close a channel to. Note that if you've set an upfront-shutdown script, it'll need to be the same script.
• New plugin notifications: sendpay_success and sendpay_failure
• Encryption of the BIP32 master seed is now available.
• UTXO selection is provided for withdraw and txprepare, which allows you to finely control which lightningd wallet UTXOs are spent or used.
• Our Bolt11 tools now parse feature bits
• Adds the ability to exclude nodes from route consideration in getroute

Please note that the deprecated RPC call listpayments has been removed; you want listpays.

Highlights for the Network

• Elements support. lightningd can now be made to support L-BTC.
• c-lightning nodes now announce features in node_announcement broadcasts.
• Further on the feature bits front, we've consolidated them -- all bits are now advertised in both global + local feature fields
• Support for gossip_queries_ex, for finer grained gossip control
• Tighter gossip bandwidth usage. We now take advantage of gossip queries and peer rotation to narrow the number of peers that we gossip with and the amount of gossip we're requesting.
• In further gossip news, we now no longer ask for initial_routing_sync.

More details can be found in https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/blob/v0.7.3/CHANGELOG.md

Contributions

Thanks to everyone for their contributions and bug reports; please keep them coming!

Since 0.7.2.1 we've had 522 commits from 18 different authors, with 5 first-time contributors!

• Luca Ambrosini
• Yash Bhutwala
• @willcl-ark
• Jacob Rapoport
• @fiatjaf

Cheers,
Lisa, Rusty, Christian, and ZmnSCPxj.

v0.7.2: Nakamoto's Pre-approval by US Congress

We're pleased to announce c-lightning 0.7.2, named by @darosior.

Note: new dependency python3-mako required when building from source!
(Also: note git tag is v0.7.2.1, due to last-minute build and packaging fixes)

Highlights for Users

• Dynamic plugin support: add and remove without restarting lightningd.
• We now ignore sync error which lnd sends if we're too slow, instead of freaking out and closing the channel.
• close defaults change: now unilterally closes after 48 hours if peer unreachable/uncooperative.
• A few operations are restricted if we're not yet synced with the bitcoin network on startup.
• contrib/bootstrap-node.sh script to help connect your new node to the network.
• Signet support: overzealously merged before bitcoind did, but now we're owning it.
• Bugfixes and more plugin hooks for plugin authors.

Highlights for the network

• We now notice if old channels (before this node existed) close, and won't spam them in gossip.
• We correctly ignore unknown odd-numbered messages, as per the specification.
• We space out reconnection on startup if there are more than 5 channels.

More details can be found in https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/blob/v0.7.2.1/CHANGELOG.md.

Contributions

Thanks to everyone for their contributions and bug reports: please keep them coming!

Since 0.7.1 we've had 334 commits from 18 different authors, with 6 first-time contributors!

• Karl-Johan Alm
• @tasoshi
• @sskender
• Nicola Squartini
• Juraj Bednar
• Chirimen-Jako

Cheers,
Rusty, Christian, ZmnSCPxj and Lisa.

v0.7.1: The Unfailing Twitter Consensus Algorithm

We're pleased to announce c-lightning 0.7.1, named by new C-Lightning Core Team member Lisa Neigut.

Highlights for Users

• Gossip (both serving to others and listchannels) is much faster and uses much less memory.
• Infrastructure to fund a channel from an external wallet (probably needs a plugin to make it user friendly).
• listpeers now show how many confirms until channel is open.
• Ability to set a minimum channel size to accept.
• Invoices now default to 7 days, rather than 1 hour.
• fundchannel can now specify exactly what utxos to use, if you want coin control.
• Various JSON API corner cases and bugs have been removed, more information added.
• Lots of new plugin hooks to play with; we expect some more impressive plugins soon!

Highlights for the network

• We no longer ask every peer for all the gossip which ever happened!
• We respect and enforce option_upfront_shutdown_script (mainly for Eclair)
• We no longer allow tiny 1000 satoshi channels: default minimum is now 10,000 satoshis.
• Improved compatibility with corner cases for both lnd (esp. older versions) and Eclair.

More details can be found in https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/blob/v0.7.1/CHANGELOG.md.

Contributions

We've seen a lot more contributions and bug reports coming in: please keep them coming!

Since 0.7.0 we've had 591 commits from 31 different authors, with a record 12 first-time contributors!

• @trueptolemy
• @darosior
• @andrewtoth
• Joe Netti
• Jeff Vandrew Jr
• Billy Garrison
• @thestick613
• Lawrence Nahum
• Kristaps Kaupe
• Hampus Sjöberg
• @dlogemann
• Atis Elsts

Cheers,
Rusty, Christian, ZmnSCPxj and Lisa.

v0.7.0: Actually an Altcoin

We're pleased to announce c-lightning 0.7, named by Mark Beckwith.

Highlights for Users

• Plugins are here, with frameworks for C, Python and Go! Write your own cool extensions!
• Much better pay implementation (a plugin!) will folllow route hints, give ongoing paystatus.
• All amount parameters take 'msat', 'sat', or 'btc' to avoid satoshi/millisatoshi confusion.
• If your node ran out of memory with gossipd consuming 100% CPU, that and several other crashes are fixed!
• Reproducible builds for Ubuntu, based on Ubuntu 18.04.1.

Highlights for the network

• option_dataloss_protect fixed and reenabled for everyone.
• We accept some known lnd protocol oddities rather than spitting the dummy and closing the channel.
• You can no longer make unpayable "wumbo" invoices.

More details can be found in the https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/blob/v0.7.0/CHANGELOG.md:

Contributions

We're grateful for all the bug reports and suggestions and your patience as we sometimes struggled to address them: please keep them coming!

Since 0.6.3 we've had 284 commits from 16 different authors, 5 of whom were first-time c-lightning contributors:

• Alekos Filini
• fanquake
• Michael Schmoock
• Rene Pickhardt
• @wailo

That's comparable with the last release, but in 7 weeks instead of 10: kudos!

Cheers,
Rusty, Christian and ZmnSCPxj.

v0.6.3: The Smallblock Conspiracy

We're pleased to announce c-lightning 0.6.3, named by @molxyz and @ctrlbreak.

We highly recommend you upgrade to this release soon; it fixes a crashing bug which has been plaguing multiple users (reproduced and verified fixed by our intrepid release-namers above).

Highlights for Users

• Private channel creation support.
• option_dataloss_protect temporarily disabled, as it seems incompatible with lnd in some cases.
• Better handling of less common BOLT11 invoices.
• Less crashy!
• Alpha release of plugin support (use ./configure --enable-plugins), so you can extend your node's capabilities (see https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/blob/master/doc/plugins.md)

Highlights for the network

• We no longer send invalid error messages if you get a peer id wrong.
• We allow update_fee before funding_locked which lnd sometimes does (we used to close channel!).

More details can be found in the https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/blob/v0.6.3/CHANGELOG.md:

Contributions

We're grateful for all the bug reports and suggestions and your patience as we sometimes struggled to address them: please keep them coming!

Since 0.6.2 we've had 314 commits from 18 different authors, 5 of whom were first-time c-lightning contributors:

• Conor Scott @conscott
• Franck Royer @D4nte
• Michael Hawkins @runcrypto-michael
• Richard Bondi @rsbondi

This is up from last release, despite the holiday break!

Cheers,
Rusty, Christian and ZmnSCPxj.

0.6.2: The Consensus Loving Nasal Daemon

We're pleased to announce c-lightning 0.6.2, named by @practicalswift.

We highly recommend you upgrade to this release soon; it will improve overall network health!

Highlights for c-lightning users:

• Invoices now contain an hint on a good incoming channel to use, for more reliable payments ("RouteBoost").
• listforwards command to show all forwarded HTLCs, and getinfo shows total fees (both only from upgrade only)
• Reduced logging spam at debug level.
• A multitude of bugfixes which make things generally much nicer.

Highlights for the network

• We no longer spam our peers with dead channels.
• Redundant gossip updates are completely eliminated.
• We advertise htlc_maximum_msat for our channels as per recent BOLT update.

Internal Improvements

• Significant optimization in JSON command response.
• connectd and hsmd are now part of the growing literate documentation effort.
• Testsuite now uses flask to override bitcoind responses for testing.

More details can be found in the CHANGELOG:

https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/blob/v0.6.2/CHANGELOG.md

Contributions

We're grateful for all the bug reports and suggestions and your patience as we sometimes struggled to address them: please keep them coming!

Since 0.6.1 we've had 239 commits from 13 different authors, 3 of whom were first-time c-lightning contributors:

• @alan8325
• Amin Shah Gilani
• @trueserve

This is down from last release, but it was a much shorter timeline too!

Cheers,
Rusty, Christian and ZmnSCPxj.

v0.6.1: Principled Opposition to SegWit

We're pleased to announce c-lightning 0.6.1, named by co-maintainer ZmnSCPxj.

Highlights for c-lightning users

• Less stuck payments: Liveness ping test before locking up funds with peers.
• Better routing: now considers size of channels.
• Fewer spurious closes: fee estimate improvements, and new feerates command
• Several annoying bugs fixed.

Highlights for the network

• Gossipd now less spammy with channel_update.
• option_data_loss_protect to protect peers against being out-of-date.
• Payment errors now refer to the correct channel.

Internal Improvements

• Simplified client flow; after init message exchange by connectd, each is isolated in its own daemon.
• JSON parameter handling vastly simplfied.
• Python testing framework now uses proper fixtures, and split into separate files.
• Many other cleanups and clarifications.
• We keepachangelog.com!

The details can be found in the CHANGELOG:
https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/blob/v0.6.1/CHANGELOG.md

Contributions

We're grateful for all the bug reports and suggestions and your patience as we sometimes struggled to address them: please keep them coming!

Since 0.6 we've had 517 commits from 31 different authors, 15 of whom were first-time c-lightning contributors:

Bertrand Marlier
Cryptcoin Junkey
Fabian Raetz
Hiroki Gondo
Jonathan Zernik
Jordan Baczuk
Ronald Mannak
Simon Vrouwe
Stephanie Stroka
gallizoltan
lisa neigut
lucash-dev
mikhaelsantos
tock203
wintercooled

Cheers,
Rusty, Christian and ZmnSCPxj.

v0.6

While there are far too many new features in the 0.6 release to list, the following are the most interesting and impactful:

• Lightweight nodes: Previous releases required a full bitcoind node
  running alongside c-lightning, to provide access to the Bitcoin network. This
  release still requires the bitcoin-cli utility to be present, but it can
  now talk to remote nodes as well, including some lightweight nodes such as
  spruned. This makes it possible to run a c-lightning node on
  Raspberry Pis as well as other low-powered devices.
• The gossip protocol has been updated to use a more lightweight bandwidth
  mechanism that asks for specific information, rather than exchanging full
  network views as the previous release did. This is particularly important for
  low-powered and mobile devices that would otherwise spend a lot of bandwidth
  and energy downloading and verifying information they already have.
• API stability: The c-lightning JSON-RPC interface and supporting
  libraries have been redesigned in order to minimize changes in future
  releases. This API stability should make it easy for other projects to build
  on top of c-lightning because we will support this version of the API for the
  foreseeable future, maintaining backward compatibility, should we introduce
  any changes.
• Wallet and sync: c-lightning now includes a full-fledged wallet that
  manages both on-chain and off-chain funds. There is no more raw transaction
  handling! All funds are automatically tracked and returned to the internal
  wallet as soon as possible, with no user interaction required. In addition
  the blockchain tracking now maintains an internal view of the blockchain,
  ending long blockchain rescans.
• TOR support: c-lightning now supports connecting to nodes over the TOR
  network, auto-registering as a hidden service, and accepting incoming
  connections over TOR.
• The payment logic has undergone a major overhaul to support automatic
  retries for routing failures, randomization of route selection, and better
  feedback about the current state of a payment.
• And as always: performance, performance, performance.

v0.6rc2

Hope to release Monday...