Chinilla-blockchain

Fixed

- This is a bug fix release for RC3. There was an unexpected interaction between the GUI and the Click cli tool regarding Windows that made GUI plotting not start on all GUIs.

Added

- RC3 is a new chain to support the last major chinillalisp changes. THCX from the RC1/2 chain do not come forward to this chain but plots and keys continue to work as usual.
- We have lowered the transaction lock to the first 5000 blocks to facilitate testing. We also started this chain at a lower difficulty.
- A new RPC api: /push_tx. Using this RPC, you can spend custom chinillalisp programs. You need to make a SpendBundle, which includes the puzzle reveal (chinillalisp), a solution (chinillalisp) and a signature.
- You can now use the RPC apis to query the mempool.
- There are now Swedish, Spanish, and Slovak translations. Huge thanks to ordtrogen (Swedish), jespino and dvd101x (Spanish), and our own seeden (Slovak). Also thanks were due to f00b4r (Finnish), A-Caccese (Italian), and Bibop182 and LeonidShamis (Russian). Quite a few more are almost complete and ready for inclusion. You can help translate and review translations at our [crowdin project](https://crowdin.com/project/chinilla-blockchain).
- You can obtain a new wallet receive address on the command line with `chinilla wallet new_address`. Thanks to jespino for this and a lot more in the next section below.
- You will now see Your Harvester Network in the GUI even if you have no plots.

Changed

- All chinillalisp opcodes have been renumbered. This should be the last major breaking change for chinillalisp and the clvm. There are a couple minor enhancements still needed for vanillanet launch, but they may or may not require minor breaking changes. We will be restarting testnet chains on a mostly weekly basis either way.
- Node batch syncing performance was increased, and it now avoids re-validating blocks that node had already validated.
- The entire CLI has been ported to [Click](https://click.palletsprojects.com/en/7.x/). Huge thanks to jespino for the big assist and unparalleled-js for the [recommendation and the initial start](https://github.com/Chinilla/chinilla-blockchain/issues/464). This will make building out the CLI much easier. There are some subtle changes and some shortcuts are not there anymore. `chinilla -h` and `chinilla SUBCOMMAND -h` can be your guide.
- We have upgraded Electron to 11.3 to support Apple Silicon. There are still one or two issues in our build chain for Apple Silicon but we should have an M1 native build shortly.
- The websocket address is no longer displayed in the GUI unless it is running as a remote GUI. Thanks dkackman !
- `chinilla plots check` now will continue checking after it finds an error in a plot to the total number of checks you specified.
- If you run install-gui.sh or install-timelord.sh without being in the venv, the script will warn you that you need to `. ./activate` and exit with error.
- If you attempt to install on a 32 bit Pi/ARM OS, the installer exits with a helpful error message. You can still fail when running under a 64 bit kernel but using a 32 bit Python 3.
- The application is now more aware of whether it is running a testnet or vanillanet. This impacts wallet's display behavior and certain blockchain validation rules.
- Interface improvements for `chinilla netspace`.
- Now that aiosqlite included our upstream improvements we install version 0.17.0.
- `chinilla init` only migrates release candidate directories. The versioned sub directories under `~/chinilla` will be going away before vanillanet.

Fixed

- The GUI was often getting stuck on connecting to wallet. We beleive we have resolved this.
- We identified and fixed an issue where harvester would crash, especially when loading plots or checking a large amount of plots.
- The software now reports not synced in the GUI if not synced or being behind by 7 minutes or more.
- Difficulty was set too high for the RC1/2 chain. This lead to odd rewards behaviour as well as difficulty artificially could not fall as low as it should.
- Don't load plots that don't need to be loaded.
- We made various fixes and changes to weight proofs.
- Some configuration values were improperly ignored in migrations.
- Some debug logging was accidentally left in.
- `chinilla configure -log-level` was broken.
- We believe we finally have the Windows Installer obtaining the correct version information at build time.
- The application was sometimes not cancel pending items when closing certain websockets.
- Fixed filter hash and generator validation.
- Recursive replace was being called from the test suite.

Fixed

- This is an errata release for Release Candidate 1. There were a couple of things that did not smoothly migrate from the Beta versions. Please make sure you also consult the [release notes for RC-1](https://github.com/Chinilla/chinilla-blockchain/releases/tag/1.0rc1) was well.
- Incorrect older spend to addresses were being migrated from Beta 27. This would send farming rewards to un-spendable coins.
- Netspace was not calculating properly in RC-1.
- The Windows installer was building with the wrong version number.
- eFishCent didn't get correct credit in the RC 1 release notes. They have been updated below to be correct.

Added

- This is the first release in our release candidate series. There are still a few things that will change at the edges but the blockchain, clvm, and chinillalisp are in release form. We have one major change to chinillalisp/clvm that we have chosen to schedule for the next release as in this release we're breaking the way q/quote works. We also have one more revision to the VDF that will decrease the sizes of the proofs of time. We expect a few more releases in the release candidate series.
- Installers will now be of the pattern ChinillaSetup-0.2.1.exe. `0.2` is release candidate and the final `.1` is the first release candidate.
- Use 'chinilla wallet get_transactions' in the command line to see your transactions.
- 'chinilla wallet show' now shows your wallet's height.
- Last Attempted Proof is now above Latest Block Challenge on the Farm page of the GUI.
- The GUI now detects duplicate plots and also only counts unique plots and unique plot size.
- We have integrated with crowdin to make it easier to translate the GUI. Check out [Chinilla Blockchain GUI](https://crowdin.com/project/chinilla-blockchain) there.
- We have added Italian, Russian, and Finnish. More to come soon.
- There is now remote UI support. [Documents](https://github.com/Chinilla/chinilla-blockchain-gui/blob/main/remote.md) will temporarily live in the repository but have moved to the [wiki](https://github.com/Chinilla/chinilla-blockchain/wiki/Connecting-the-UI-to-a-remote-daemon). Thanks to dkackman for this excellent addition!
- Added the ability to specify an address for the pool when making plots (-c flag), as opposed to a public key. The block
validation was changed to allow blocks like these to be made. This will enable changing pools in the future, by specifying a smart transaction for your pool rewards.
- Added `chinilla plots check --challenge-start [start]` that begins at a different `[start]` for `-n [challenges]`. Useful when you want to do more detailed checks on plots without restarting from lower challenge values you already have done. Huge thanks to eFishCent for this and all of the debugging work behind the scenes confirming that plot failures were machine errors and not bugs!

Changed

- Sub blocks renamed to blocks, and blocks renamed to transaction blocks, everywhere. This effects the RPC, now
all fields that referred to sub blocks are changed to blocks.
- Base difficulty and weight have increased, so difficulty of "5" in the rc1 testnet will be equivalent to "21990232555520" in the previous testnet.
- 'chinilla wallet send' now takes in THCX or HCX as units instead of vojos.
- Transactions have been further sped up.
- The blockchain database has more careful validation.
- The GUI is now using bech32m.

Fixed

- We updated chinillapos to hopefully address some harvester crashes when moving plot files.
- Many of the cards on the Farming page have had bugs addressed including last block farmed, block rewards, and user fees.
- Improved validation of overflow blocks.

Added

- The Beta 27 chain is a hard fork. All THCX from previous releases has been reset on this chain. Your keys and plots of k=32 or larger continue to work just fine on this new chain.
- We now use the rust version of clvm, clvm_rs, in preference to validate transactions. We have additionally published binary wheels or clvm_rs for all four platforms and all three supported python versions. The rust version is approximately 50 times faster than the python version used to validate on chain transactions in previous versions.
- We have moved to compressed quadratic forms for VDFs. Using compressed representation of quadratic forms reduces their serialized size from 130 to 100 bytes (for forms with 1024-bit discriminant). This shrinks the size of VDF outputs and VDF proofs, and it's a breaking change as the compressed representation is not compatible with the older uncompressed (a, b) representation. Compressed forms are also used in calls to chinillavdf and in timelord's communication with VDF clients. The form compression algorithm is based on ["Trustless Groups of Unknown Order with Hyperelliptic Curves"](https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/196) by Samuel Dobson, Steven D. Galbraith and Benjamin Smith.
- Last Attempted Proof on the Farm tab of the GUI now shows hours:minutes:seconds instead of just hours:minutes. This makes it much easier to see that your farmer is responding to recent challenges at a glance.
- You can now send and receive transactions with the command line. Try `chinilla wallet -h` to learn more. Also, `chinilla wallet` now requires a third argument of `show`, therefor you will use `chinilla wallet show` to see your wallet balance.
- We have added the [Crowdin](https://crowdin.com/) translation platform to [chinilla blockchain gui](https://crowdin.com/project/chinilla-blockchain). We are still getting it fully set up, but helping to translate the GUI is going to be much easier.
- Full Node > Connections in the GUI now shows the peak sub block height your connected peers believe they are at. A node syncing from you will not be at the true peak sub block height until it gets into sync.
- `chinilla init -c [directory]` will create new TLS certificates signed by your CA located in `[directory]`. Use this feature to configure a new remote harvester. Type `chinilla init -h` to get instructions. Huge thanks to a very efficient eFishCent for this quick and thorough pull request.
- We build both MacOS x86_64 and MacOS universal wheels for chinillapos, chinillavdf, blpsy, and chinillabip158 in Python 3.9. The universal build allows M1 Macs to run these dependencies in ARM64 native mode.
- On first run in the GUI (or when there are no plot directories) there is now an "Add Plot Directories" on the Farm tab also.

Changed

- We are moving away from the terms sub blocks and blocks in our new consensus. What used to be called sub blocks will now just be blocks. Some blocks are now also transaction blocks. This is simpler both in the code and to reason about. Not all the code or UI may have caught up yet.
- This release has the final vanillanet rewards schedule. During the first three years, each block winner will win 2 THCX/HCX per block for a total of 9216 THCX per day from 4608 challenges per day.
- Smart transactions now use an announcement instead of 'coin consumed' or lock methods.
- The GUI is now in a separate submodule repository from chinilla-blockchain, [chinilla-blockchain-gui](https://github.com/Chinilla/chinilla-blockchain-gui). The installers and install scripts have been updated and it continues to follow the same install steps. Note that the GUI directory will now be `chinilla-blockchain-gui`. The workflow for this may be "touch and go" for people who use the git install methods over the short term.
- Very large coin counts are now supported.
- Various RPC endpoints have been renamed to follow our switch to "just blocks" from sub blocks.
- We've made changes to the protocol handshake and the blockchain genesis process to support vanillanet launch and running/farming more than one chain at a time. That also means we can't as easily determine when an old version of the peer tries to connect so we will put warnings in the logs for now.
- We no longer replace addresses in the config. **IMPORTANT** - This means if you change the target address in config.yml, you have to make sure you control the correct keys.
- We now only migrate Beta 19 and newer installations.
- We have removed cbor2 as a dependency.
- We updated various dependencies including cryptography, packaging, portalocker, and pyyaml - most of which are only development dependencies.

Fixed

- The function that estimated total farming space was counting space at twice the actual rate. Netspace will display half of the previous space estimate which is now a correct estimate of the actual space currently being farmed.
- We fixed many sync and stay in sync issue for both node and wallet including that both would send peaks to other peers multiple times and would validate the same transaction multiple times.
- The GUI was incorrectly reporting the time frame that the netspace estimate it displays utilizes. It is technically 312.5 minutes, on average, over the trailing 1000 sub blocks.
- Coloured coins were not working in the new consensus.
- Some Haswell processors do not have certain AVX extensions and therefor would not run.
- The cli wallet, `chinilla wallet`, was incorrectly displaying THCX balances as if they were Coloured Coins.
- We addressed [CVE-2020-28477](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-28477) in the GUI.
- We made changes to CI to hopefully not repeat our skipped releases from the previous release cycle.

Added

- We now use our own faster primality test based on Baillie-PSW. The new primality test is based on the 2020 paper ["Strengthening the Baillie-PSW primality test" by Robert Baillie, Andrew Fiori, Samuel S. Wagstaff Jr](https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.14425). The new test works approximately 20% faster than GMP library's mpz_probab_prime_p() function when generating random 1024-bit primes. This lowers the load on Timelords and speeds up VDF verifications in full node.
- The GUI now checks for an an already running GUI and stops the second launch. Thank you for that PR to dkackman !
- Transactions are now validated in a separate process in full node.
- `chinilla plots check -l` will list all duplicate plot IDs found on the machine. Thanks very much for this PR eFishCent.

Changed

- Significant improvements have been made to how the full node handles the mempool. This generally cuts CPU usage of node by 2x or more. Part of this increase is that we have temporarily limited the size of transactions. If you want to test sending a transaction you should keep the value of your transaction below 20 THCX as new consensus will cause you to use a lot of inputs. This will be returned to the expected level as soon as the integration of [clvm rust](https://github.com/Chinilla/clvm_rs) is complete.
- We have changed the way TLS between nodes and between chinilla services work. Each node now has two certificate authorities. One is a public, shared CA that signs the TLS certificates that every node uses to connect to other nodes on 8444 or 40444. You now also have a self generated private CA that must sign e.g. farmer and harvester's certificates. To run a remote harvester you need a new harvester key that is then signed by your private CA. We know this is not easy for remote harvester in this release but will address it quickly.
- We have changed the way we compile the proof of space plotter and added one additional optimization. On many modern processors this will mean that using the plotter with the `-e` flag will be 2-3% faster than the Beta 17 plotter on the same CPU. We have found this to be very sensitive to different CPUs but are now confident that, at worst, the Beta 24 plotter with `-e` will be the same speed as Beta 17 if not slightly faster on the same hardware. Huge thanks to xorinox for meticulously tracking down and testing this.
- If a peer is not responsive during sync, node will disconnect it.
- Peers that have not sent data in the last hour are now disconnected.
- We have made the "Help Translate" button in the GUI open in your default web browser and added instructions for adding new translations and more phrases in existing translations at that [URL](https://github.com/Chinilla/chinilla-blockchain/tree/main/electron-react/src/locales). Try the "Help Translate" option on the language selection pull down to the left of the dark/light mode selection at the top right of the GUI.
- Sync store now tracks all connected peers and removes them as they get removed.
- The Rate Limited Wallet has been ported to new consensus and updated Chinillalisp methods.
- We are down to only one sub dependency that does not ship binary wheels for all four platforms. The only platform still impacted is ARM64 (generally Raspberry Pi) but that only means that you still need the minor build tools as outlined on the [wiki](https://github.com/Chinilla/chinilla-blockchain/wiki/Raspberry-Pi).
- We upgraded to Electron 9.4.2 for the GUI.
- We have upgraded to py-setproctitle 1.2.2. We now have binary wheels for setproctitle on all four platforms and make it a requirement in setup.py. It is run-time optional if you wish to disable it.

Fixed

- On the Farm page of the GUI Latest Block Challenge is now populated. This shows you the actual challenge that came from the Timelord. Index is the signage point index in the current slot. There are 64 signage points every 10 minutes on average where 32 sub blocks can be won.
- Last Attempted Proof is now fixed. This will show you the last time one of your plots passed the [plot filter](https://github.com/Chinilla/chinilla-blockchain/wiki/FAQ#what-is-the-plot-filter-and-why-didnt-my-plot-pass-it).
- Plot filename is now back in the Plots table of the GUI.
- There was a bug in adding a sub block to weight proofs and an issue in the weight proof index.
- Over time the node would think that there were no peers attached with peak sub block heights higher than 0.
- There was a potential bug in Python 3.9.0 that required us to update blspy, chinillapos, chinillavdf, and chinillabip158.
- An off by one issue could cause syncing to ask for 1 sub block when it should ask for e.g. 32.
- Short sync and backtrack sync both had various issues.
- There was an edge case in bip158 handling.

Known issues

- There is a remaining sync disconnect issue where your synced node will stop hearing responses from the network even though it still gets a few peaks and then stalls. Restarting node should let you quickly short sync back to the blockchain tip.