Upgrade Bitcoin Core version 23.0 on Linux

Alan Sunny

Oct 24, 2022 — 9 min read

In this guide we will discuss how to upgrade your Bitcoin Core node to the newest stable version.

Bitcoin core full-node setup

Bitcoin Core is the original Bitcoin client and it builds the backbone of the bitcoin network. Bitcoin core downloads and store full blockchain history of every Bitcoin transactions therefore depending on the speed of your network/hardware, the synchronisation process can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or more. Check out the Bitcoin core setup guide if you want to run own your bitcoin node.

Upgrade Bitcoin Core Step-by-Step guide:

First of all, Stop bitcoin core before upgrade process can start. If you ever need to go back to older version, follow our bitcoin core 22.0 version install guide.

$ bitcoin-cli stop
Bitcoin server stopping

Make sure bitcoin core node is stopped

$ bitcoin-cli status
error: Could not connect to the server 127.0.0.1:8332

Install the latest version of Bitcoin Core

There are multiple ways you can upgrade a Bitcoin core node. We will be covering in this article how to upgrade using all these methods.

Upgrade Bitcoin Core node securely using prebuilt binaries

Download the Bitcoin Core full-node binaries for Ubuntu OS

wget https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-23.0/bitcoin-23.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz

Download the Bitcoin Core signature file

wget https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-23.0/SHA256SUMS

Verify that the hash of the downloaded version file matches the hash in the signature file, this is to make sure you have downloaded the correct file for which the Bitcoin core developers have signed.

sha256sum bitcoin-23.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
2cca490c1f2842884a3c5b0606f179f9f937177da4eadd628e3f7fd7e25d26d0  bitcoin-23.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz

cat SHA256SUMS | grep bitcoin-23.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
2cca490c1f2842884a3c5b0606f179f9f937177da4eadd628e3f7fd7e25d26d0  bitcoin-23.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz

$ sha256sum --ignore-missing --check SHA256SUMS
bitcoin-23.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz: OK

Bitcoin releases are signed by a number of individuals, each with a unique public key. In order to recognise the validity of signatures, you must use GPG to load these public keys locally. You can find many developer keys listed in the bitcoin/bitcoin repository, which you can then load into your GPG key database.

$ gpg --keyserver hkps://keys.openpgp.org --recv-keys E777299FC265DD04793070EB944D35F9AC3DB76A

Output:

gpg: key 944D35F9AC3DB76A: public key "Michael Ford (bitcoin-otc) <[email protected]>" imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:               imported: 1

Verify that the checksums file is PGP signed by the release signing key:

$ gpg --verify SHA256SUMS.asc

Good signature from "Michael Ford (bitcoin-otc) <[email protected]>" [unknown]
gpg: WARNING: The key's User ID is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg:          There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: E777 299F C265 DD04 7930  70EB 944D 35F9 AC3D B76A
     Subkey fingerprint: CFB1 6E21 C950 F67F A95E  558F 2EEB 9F5C C095 26C1
gpg: Signature made Fri 10 Sep 09:03:16 2021 BST
gpg:                using RSA key 6E01EEC9656903B0542B8F1003DB6322267C373B
gpg:                issuer "[email protected]"

by at least one of its developers and is secure for usage.

You can now extract the file and copy-paste the binaries to its location.

Mostly the binaries are in /usr/bin/ or usr/local/bin file. You can check it for Bitcoin by running the command:

$ which bitcoind

Upgrade Bitcoin Core 23.0 node from source code

Clone the Bitcoin core git repository.

$ git clone https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git

Change the current working directory to the bitcoin repo you just cloned.

$ cd bitcoin

Checkout to the desired version tag, in this case 23.0

$ git checkout v23.0

Finally, compile the latest version of Bitcoin Core with these steps.

$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure 
$ make
$ sudo make install

NOTE: You can enable or disable bitcoin core features when running the ./configure command

Upgrade Bitcoin Core full-node third party PPA

This is one of the easiest way to upgrade Bitcoin core node. Simply run the below update command for Ubuntu if you have installed Bitcoin using third party PPA.

$ sudo apt-get update

Start the Bitcoin Core daemon

$ bitcoind --version
Bitcoin Core Daemon version v0.18.0

$ bitcoind -daemon
Bitcoin server starting

How to check Check Bitcoin Core logs

$ tail -f ~/.bitcoin/debug.log

Bitcoin Core 23.0 Release Notes

Bitcoin Core version 23.0 is now available from:

https://bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-23.0/

This release includes new features, various bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as updated translations.

Please report bugs using the issue tracker at GitHub:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues

To receive security and update notifications, please subscribe to:

https://bitcoincore.org/en/list/announcements/join/

How to Upgrade

If you are running an older version, shut it down. Wait until it has completely shut down (which might take a few minutes in some cases), then run the installer (on Windows) or just copy over /Applications/Bitcoin-Qt (on Mac) or bitcoind/bitcoin-qt (on Linux).

Upgrading directly from a version of Bitcoin Core that has reached its EOL is possible, but it might take some time if the data directory needs to be migrated. Old wallet versions of Bitcoin Core are generally supported.

Compatibility

Bitcoin Core is supported and extensively tested on operating systems using the Linux kernel, macOS 10.15+, and Windows 7 and newer. Bitcoin Core should also work on most other Unix-like systems but is not as frequently tested on them. It is not recommended to use Bitcoin Core on unsupported systems.

Notable changes

P2P and network changes

A bitcoind node will no longer rumour addresses to inbound peers by default. They will become eligible for address gossip after sending an ADDR, ADDRV2, or GETADDR message. (#21528)
Before this release, Bitcoin Core had a strong preference to try to connect only to peers that listen on port 8333. As a result of that, Bitcoin nodes listening on non-standard ports would likely not get any Bitcoin Core peers connecting to them. This preference has been removed. (#23542)
Full support has been added for the CJDNS network. See the new option -cjdnsreachable and doc/cjdns.md (#23077)

Fee estimation changes

Fee estimation now takes the feerate of replacement (RBF) transactions into account. (#22539)

Rescan startup parameter removed

The -rescan startup parameter has been removed. Wallets which require rescanning due to corruption will still be rescanned on startup. Otherwise, please use the rescanblockchain RPC to trigger a rescan. (#23123)

Tracepoints and Userspace, Statically Defined Tracing support

Bitcoin Core release binaries for Linux now include experimental tracepoints which act as an interface for process-internal events. These can be used for review, debugging, monitoring, and more. The tracepoint API is semi-stable. While the API is tested, process internals might change between releases requiring changes to the tracepoints. Information about the existing tracepoints can be found under doc/tracing.md and usage examples are provided in contrib/tracing/.

Updated RPCs

The validateaddress RPC now returns an error_locations array for invalid addresses, with the indices of invalid character locations in the address (if known). For example, this will attempt to locate up to two Bech32 errors, and return their locations if successful. Success and correctness are only guaranteed if fewer than two substitution errors have been made. The error message returned in the error field now also returns more specific errors when decoding fails. (#16807)
The -deprecatedrpc=addresses configuration option has been removed. RPCs gettxout, getrawtransaction, decoderawtransaction, decodescript, gettransaction verbose=true and REST endpoints /rest/tx, /rest/getutxos, /rest/block no longer return the addresses and reqSigs fields, which were previously deprecated in 22.0. (#22650)

The getblock RPC command now supports verbosity level 3 containing transaction inputs' prevout information. The existing /rest/block/ REST endpoint is modified to contain this information too. Every vin field will contain an additional prevout subfield describing the spent output. prevout contains the following keys:

generated - true if the spent coins was a coinbase.
height
value
scriptPubKey
The top-level fee fields fee, modifiedfee, ancestorfees and descendantfees returned by RPCs getmempoolentry,getrawmempool(verbose=true), getmempoolancestors(verbose=true) and getmempooldescendants(verbose=true) are deprecated and will be removed in the next major version (use -deprecated=fees if needed in this version). The same fee fields can be accessed through the fees object in the result. WARNING: deprecated fields ancestorfees and descendantfees are denominated in sats, whereas all fields in the fees object are denominated in BTC. (#22689)
Both createmultisig and addmultisigaddress now include a warnings field, which will show a warning if a non-legacy address type is requested when using uncompressed public keys. (#23113)

Changes to wallet related RPCs can be found in the Wallet section below.

New RPCs

Information on soft fork status has been moved from getblockchaininfo to the new getdeploymentinfo RPC which allows querying soft fork status at any block, rather than just at the chain tip. Inclusion of soft fork status in getblockchaininfo can currently be restored using the configuration -deprecatedrpc=softforks, but this will be removed in a future release. Note that in either case, the status field now reflects the status of the current block rather than the next block. (#23508)

Files

On startup, the list of banned hosts and networks (via setban RPC) in banlist.dat is ignored and only banlist.json is considered. Bitcoin Core version 22.x is the only version that can read banlist.dat and also write it to banlist.json. If banlist.json already exists, version 22.x will not try to translate the banlist.dat into json. After an upgrade, listbanned can be used to double check the parsed entries. (#22570)

Updated settings

In previous releases, the meaning of the command line option -persistmempool (without a value provided) incorrectly disabled mempool persistence. -persistmempool is now treated like other boolean options to mean -persistmempool=1. Passing -persistmempool=0, -persistmempool=1 and -nopersistmempool is unaffected. (#23061)
-maxuploadtarget now allows human readable byte units [k|K|m|M|g|G|t|T]. E.g. -maxuploadtarget=500g. No whitespace, +- or fractions allowed. Default is M if no suffix provided. (#23249)
If -proxy= is given together with -noonion then the provided proxy will not be set as a proxy for reaching the Tor network. So it will not be possible to open manual connections to the Tor network for example with the addnode RPC. To mimic the old behavior use -proxy= together with -onlynet= listing all relevant networks except onion. (#22834)

Tools and Utilities

Update -getinfo to return data in a user-friendly format that also reduces vertical space. (#21832)
CLI -addrinfo now returns a single field for the number of onion addresses known to the node instead of separate torv2 and torv3 fields, as support for Tor V2 addresses was removed from Bitcoin Core in 22.0. (#22544)

Wallet

Descriptor wallets are now the default wallet type. Newly created wallets will use descriptors unless descriptors=false is set during createwallet, or the Descriptor wallet checkbox is unchecked in the GUI.

Note that wallet RPC commands like importmulti and dumpprivkey cannot be used with descriptor wallets, so if your client code relies on these commands without specifying descriptors=false during wallet creation, you will need to update your code.

Newly created descriptor wallets will contain an automatically generated tr() descriptor which allows for creating single key Taproot receiving addresses.
upgradewallet will now automatically flush the keypool if upgrading from a non-HD wallet to an HD wallet, to immediately start using the newly-generated HD keys. (#23093)
a new RPC newkeypool has been added, which will flush (entirely clear and refill) the keypool. (#23093)
listunspent now includes ancestorcount, ancestorsize, and ancestorfees for each transaction output that is still in the mempool. (#12677)
lockunspent now optionally takes a third parameter, persistent, which causes the lock to be written persistently to the wallet database. This allows UTXOs to remain locked even after node restarts or crashes. (#23065)
receivedby RPCs now include coinbase transactions. Previously, the following wallet RPCs excluded coinbase transactions: getreceivedbyaddress, getreceivedbylabel, listreceivedbyaddress, listreceivedbylabel. This release changes this behaviour and returns results accounting for received coins from coinbase outputs. The previous behaviour can be restored using the configuration -deprecatedrpc=exclude_coinbase, but may be removed in a future release. (#14707)
A new option in the same receivedby RPCs, include_immature_coinbase (default=false), determines whether to account for immature coinbase transactions. Immature coinbase transactions are coinbase transactions that have 100 or fewer confirmations, and are not spendable. (#14707)

GUI changes

UTXOs which are locked via the GUI are now stored persistently in the wallet database, so are not lost on node shutdown or crash. (#23065)
The Bech32 checkbox has been replaced with a dropdown for all address types, including the new Bech32m (BIP-350) standard for Taproot enabled wallets.

Low-level changes

RPC

getblockchaininfo now returns a new time field, that provides the chain tip time. (#22407)

Tests

For the regtest network the activation heights of several softforks were set to block height 1. They can be changed by the runtime setting -testactivationheight=name@height. (#22818)

Full Release note for bitcoin core 23.0 can be found on below link.