Cardano 1.4: Daedalus 0.12.0 with Cardano SL 2.0.0

This release brings significant robustness improvements and resolves some network connection issues which were affecting a lot of users. There have also been exceptional improvements in the amount of hard drive space required to store the blockchain: optimized block storage has reduced the number of files required from 1.3 million to less then 50,000 for one year of blockchain history, with all the performance improvements that entails.

Daedalus now supports Linux! This release was tested against Ubuntu 18 and Fedora 28, but it should work with all other major distributions.

In yet more big news, one of the most critical components of Daedalus and Cardano SL, the wallet backend, has been completely rewritten for this release. The new wallet backend was developed and tested against the formal specification for Cardano wallet, and brings improvements in performance, reliability, and dramatically improved input selection for transaction creation. These improvements are important for cryptocurrency exchanges and other users with large wallets. This version of Cardano SL also includes a completely rewritten v1 API, which is now the default, and the old v0 API will be deprecated in one of the future releases.

The Cardano wallet formal specification has significance outside of IOHK and Cardano as well. It’s the most comprehensive document yet that describes UTxO cryptocurrency wallets and their behavior, with all subtle edge cases, using mathematical techniques. UTxO wallet implementations based on such a specification can use formal verification techniques to demonstrate that their design and implementation are correct with respect to the formal specification, ensuring optimal wallet behaviour. For Daedalus, being the first wallet to be built based on a formal specification allows IOHK to lead by example, proving the benefits of formal specification and verification.

The new wallet backend implementation changes how wallet data is stored and managed. As a result, all wallets need to be restored and synchronized with the history of Cardano blockchain. This is an automatic process and does not require any action from users.

For a better understanding of how Cardano is versioned, as both blockchain product and software, please read our blog post Versioning Cardano.

You can also read our second blog post, Backwards incompatible changes in Cardano 1.4 Wallet API, Wallet API Lead Matthias Benkort explains backwards incompatible Cardano Wallet API changes that are coming in Cardano 1.4, and DevOps Lead Jacob Mitchell shows how to build a Cardano client with both the old V0 wallet API and the new V1 wallet API, instead of the default option providing only the new API.

The update will be delivered to current Cardano users automatically through Daedalus update system.

Listen to the latest podcast highlighting the Cardano 1.4 release here.