Initial release marking the start of the alpha testnet. This is a source code only release. Check it out from git and follow the instructions in the README.md to build and run it.
The Release is based on Bitcoin Core 0.16.3. It adds a number of significant changes:
- Replace Proof of Work by Esperanza Proof of Stake consensus protocol
- Staking wallet with remote staking support, no minimum stake required
- Finality, enabled by a new actor voting every epoch (50 blocks), with advanced on-chain lifecycle (deposit, vote, slash, withdraw). Security is maintained through financial incentives, including availability requirement and slashing for misbehavior
- Malleability protection through native SegWit support
- Reduced bandwidth, storage, and time to sync of initial blockchain download by UTXO snapshots
- Enhanced privacy through Dandelion Lite
- Optimized block propagation through Graphene
- Canonical transaction ordering
- Hardware wallet support
- Qt based GUI wallet has been removed. An alternative will be released later in a separate code repository.