New Beta Release: Fixes, Packaging and Launch Preparation

Today, we deployed the third beta release of the Zcash reference implementation, 1.0.0-rc1, to the testnet. This is the third release of the Zcash Beta Series. The new release includes the following changes [1]:

1. We added a script to create a Zcash Debian package. (#1448)
2. We have published the first release of our Gitian-based deterministic build environment and updated libsnark to support it. (#1521, #1543, #1541)
3. We have renamed the client identifier from “Satoshi” to “Magic Bean”. (#1481)
4. We have made the 100kb transaction size limit a consensus rule, rather than a standard rule. (#1501)
5. Fixed UTXO selection and improved error reporting surrounding the consensus rule that coinbase UTXOs must be sent to a zaddr. (#1431)
6. Added JoinSplits to the JSON output of the RPC call gettransaction. (#1493)
7. The ‘account’ parameter in RPC calls is now deprecated. (#1490)
8. Debug log messages for z_* RPC calls can be viewed with option -debug=”zrpc”. (#1523)
9. Fixed a bug in encrypted wallets by caching nullifiers. (#1520)
10. Added fixes to address a bug with note witnesses in the wallet. (#1526, #1547)
11. Fixed an issue where some tests where outputting data to local directory. (#1506)
12. We have updated documentation related to Tor, the release process, security risks and wallet reindexing. (#1483, #1511, #1499, #1492)

Note that this release does not reset the beta testnet and continues to uses the beta 2 proving and verify keys. NOTE: It does however make a change to the local block index format that will cause all upgraded nodes to fail to start (because they can’t parse the old block index format). As the error message will say, please start up your node once with the reindex flag after upgrading (ie. ./src/zcashd -reindex ) to resolve this issue.

To follow our progress, watch the GitHub project and join the forum. To get an email announcement when Zcash Sprout is ready, put your email address in here.