Anika Begay
Dogecoin Core version 1.14.8 has been officially released and is now available for download on GitHub. This minor release brings several crucial improvements aimed at improving the stability, efficiency, and security of the Dogecoin network and is recommended for all users.
The update includes several important changes, most notably several fixes that were backported from the Bitcoin Core upstream. DOGE contributor, junior developer (@chromatic_x) announced via X: “Dogecoin Core 1.14.8 has been released. This minor release includes important updates to the network code. We strongly recommend all users to update on each platform soon.”
Why Dogecoin Core V1.14.8 is Important
One of the key improvements in the new release is the significant reduction in peer INV (inventory) item counts. Previously, Dogecoin Core nodes maintained a large and often excessive list of inventory items for each peer. The latest update has streamlined this to a more reasonable number, thus optimizing resource allocation across nodes and reducing unnecessary network traffic.
Further improving the network’s efficiency, the update overhauled the transaction request tracking system. The new system improves the way Dogecoin Core communicates with other peers, prioritizing outgoing peers over incoming peers. This prioritization is critical as it makes CPU and memory usage more predictable and scalable, especially important as the number of peers increases.
Additionally, orphan transactions are now processed better. Previously handled in a complex and resource-intensive manner, orphan transactions are now processed similarly to regular “getdata” messages. This change not only speeds up the processing of these transactions, but also simplifies the underlying code, making it easier to maintain and less prone to errors.
Another notable change is the reduction of getheaders traffic for INV messages. Previously, Dogecoin Core sent multiple getheaders messages per INV message, which increased bandwidth usage and complicated the codebase. The update changes this approach by sending a single “getheaders” message for a block when announced in an INV message, thus reducing traffic and simplifying the interaction logic.
The release also includes a better approach to reporting difficulty adjustment errors. Before this update, difficulty adjustment violations were not reported for chains that branched before the last checkpoint. This has been fixed by rearranging the check sequence, moving the checkpoint check to follow the difficulty check, which improves the accuracy of the network’s self-monitoring capabilities.
Security has been a key concern in this update, highlighted by detailed documentation in the SECURITY.md file, which outlines procedures for reporting potential vulnerabilities. This proactive approach is critical to maintaining trust and integrity within the Dogecoin network.
On the technical side, the update includes several dependency updates such as fontconfig to version 2.12.6, freetype to version 2.11.0, and expat to version 2.6.2. These updates ensure that Dogecoin Core runs on secure and efficient libraries. Additionally, the update enables compilation with Boost 1.80 and above and supports compilation with updated C++ standards, improving code robustness and future-proofing the development environment.
At press time, DOGE was trading at $0.10134.
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