Altought without many significant changes, the new version of the BitcoinCore, includes the first soft fork to increase the size of the block; the update appears to be on the right track since the associated development team has taken the first step to increase the block size.

As part of this soft fork, three different BIPs will be activated. The combination of all these features leads to the so-called “CSV” deployment; signage begins at midnight May 1, 2016. There is still a long way to travel before the block size increase comes into effect; however, a further development is already necessary. Another novelty, in version 0.12.1, corresponds with the CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY, which updates the bitcoin script language, allowing the “freeze” for a specific time of Bitcoins, starting from the first confirmation. This change will allow a complex variety of bidirectional pay channels, as for example the lightning network.

Although still there aren’t concrete answers in the debate about the size block, this updates points in the right direction.

How to Update

If you are running an earlier version, we recommend turning it off. Wait until it is completely closed (which may take a few minutes to previous versions), then run Setup (on Windows) or just copy / applications / Bitcoin-Qt (on Mac) or bitcoind / bitcoin-qt (on Linux). In this new version, several corrections of errors and translations have been updated.

To report possible errors, developers recommend visit the monitoring of incidents on github.

For more details you can check out here release notes of this version.

Disclaimer: This press release is for informational purposes information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest.