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What's New in 19
Release 19 brings several major improvements to Blockstack Core. It is not a consensus-breaking release. 19.x nodes will continue to agree with 0.18.x nodes about the chain state.
This release is a refactoring/house-keeping release in which many little-used and deprecated features were removed. This release also changes the versioning scheme for Blockstack Core -- starting with this release, each new release will increment the major version number. The next release will be version 20.
Release Highlights
Removal of the Python CLI: This release drops over 27,000 lines of code by
removing the Python Blockstack CLI. This tool was superceded by the Blockstack
Browser, blockstack.js, and the
Node.js Blockstack CLI. The
storage and transaction logic is now implemented solely in blockstack.js,
which both the Browser and the Node.js CLI use.
Removal of most POST Endpoints: As discussed in the release notes for 0.18,
the /v1/store endpoints were deprecated. This release removes them
completely, and along with them, nearly every non-GET endpoint. The only POST
endpoint remaining is /v1/zonefile, which lets you broadcast an
already-announced zone file.
Moved Storage API and Drivers to Gaia Hubs: All storage drivers and the storage API are now part of the Blockstack Gaia hub, which is deployed separately. Users no longer need to run a locally-hosted storage proxy to give applications access to their data. Instead, they can deploy a Gaia hub on a server of their choice (or use a public-use Gaia hub like https://hub.blockstack.org). This makes mobile development much simpler and removes a consistent pain point for installing and running the Blockstack Browser.
Moved Transaction API to a Transaction Broadcaster: This codebase no longer generates and broadcasts transactions. This code has instead been moved to the transaction broadcaster service. A user no longer has to run a transaction-broadcasting daemon locally to register names -- instead, users can leverage a publicly-hosted one that they trust (however, users retain the ability to run their own local daemon if they wish).
Merger of the Indexer and RESTful API Processes: Blockstack Core is now a single process that implements the blockchain indexer, the peer-to-peer interface, and the RESTful API. Before, the RESTful API had been a separate process that was part of the now-defunct Python CLI. This makes deploying a Blockstack Core node much simpler.
Better Behavior under Load: This release is much better at accepting and handling many simultaneous requests than 0.18. While P2P requests are still serialized, the server is able to accept and queue multiple inbound connections and gracefully shed load if it has too many clients. This fixes a pernicious bug whereby the Linux kernel will assume a Blockstack Core node under load is experiencing a TCP SYN flood.
Subdomain Processing Speedup: This release improves subdomain indexing by nearly 200x by using more efficient database queries than 0.18. This allows it to process many more subdomain updates while keeping pace with the blockchain.
RESTful API Query Speedup: Some RESTful API queries are faster -- both
asymptotically faster and faster by constant factors than 0.18. These include
/v1/names, /v1/names/{:name}/zonefile/{:zonefileHash}, /v1/addresses, and
a few others.
Better Documentation: The RESTful API documentation has been fleshed out
with sample schemas and error messages for all API calls. Also, the
documentation in docs/ has been revamped into a searchable database hosted at
https://docs.blockstack.org.
Getting Started
The recommended way to get started with 19 is through its fast-sync mode. To migrate from a 0.18 node to a 19 node, we recommend the following steps:
# stop the old node
$ blockstack-core stop
$ mv ~/.blockstack-server ~/.blockstack-server.0.18
# start the new node
$ blockstack-core fast-sync
$ blockstack-core start
The old chain state database directory structure has changed, and is
incompatible with this new release. If you are
upgrading from a 0.18 node or older, you will need to remove your .blockstack-server
directory.
This release no longer requires you to run blockstack api start to start the
RESTful API. It will be activated by default on port 6270.