# Release 4.1.5 - (July 19, 2021)
* Builds/binaries:
- macOS: the .dmg binary should now be reproducible
* Kivy/Android: fix paying bip70 invoices (regression) (90579ccf)
* fix: payment requests not saved if process is killed (6a049d99)
* Lightning: improve payment success when using trampoline (3a7f5373)
* add support for signet test network (#7282)
* Qt GUI:
- allow restoring from SLIP39 seeds (#6917)
- rework QR code scanning on Windows and macOS (#7365)
- support smaller window sizes, decrease minimums (#7385)
* GUIs: add "funded or unused" filter option to Addresses tab (#5823)
# Release 4.1.4 - (June 17, 2021)
* Kivy/Android: fix a regression where a non-LN wallet
could not open the settings (c49d6995)
* CLI/RPC: fix "close_wallet" command (#7348)
# Release 4.1.3 - (June 16, 2021)
* Builds/binaries:
- Android: the binaries (APKs) should now be reproducible (#7263)
- AppImage: fix some startup issues by including libxcb deps (#7198)
* Lightning:
- smarter LN pathfinding (if trampoline is disabled):
- estimate liquidity in channels using previous attempts (#7152)
- consider inflight HTLCs and try to route around them (#7292)
- bugfix: add more safety checks to avoid "batch RBF" feature
merging LN funding txs (#7298)
- remove HTLC value upper limit of ~42 mBTC (#7328)
- Kivy GUI: implement freezing LN channels (11bb39ee)
* imported wallets: when enabling the "Use change addresses" option,
change will now be sent to a random unused imported address. (#7330)
As before, by default, change is sent back to the "from address".
* seed generation: make sure newly created electrum seeds don't have
correct bip39 checksum by chance (#6001)
* other minor fixes
# Release 4.1.2 - (April 8, 2021)
* Qt GUI:
- fix some crashes when exiting (#6889)
- make sure pressing Ctrl-C always quits (c41cd4ae)
* Kivy GUI (Android):
- fix bug with scrollbar, again (#7155)
- 2fa wallets: fix making transactions (#7190)
- implement freezing addresses (#7178)
* Android: use more modern application launcher/icon (#7187)
# Release 4.1.1 - (April 2, 2021)
* fix Qt crash with the swap dialog
* fix Kivy bug with scrollbar (#7155)
* fix localization issues (#7158#4621)
* fix python crash with swaps (#7160)
* other minor fixes
# Release 4.1.0 - Kangaroo (March 30, 2021)
This version is our second major release with support for the
Lightning Network. While our initial Lightning release was mostly
about implementing the protocol, this release brings features that are
specifically aimed at keeping Electrum lightweight and trustless,
while avoiding single points of failure. Most of the features listed
below are user-visible.
* The wallet creation wizard no longer asks for a seed type, and
creates segwit wallets with bech32 addresses. Older seed types can
still be created with the command line.
* Paid invoices (both incoming and outgoing) are automatically
removed from the send/receive lists of the GUI (one confirmation is
needed for onchain invoices). Once removed from the list, invoice
details can still be accessed from the transaction history. In Qt,
invoice lists have been renamed to 'Sending queue' and 'Receiving
queue'.
* Lightning:
- recoverable channels (see below)
- trampoline payments (see below)
- support multi-part-payment
- support upfront-shutdown-script
* Recoverable channels (option):
- Recovery data is added to the channel funding transaction using
an OP_RETURN. This makes it possible to recover a static backup
of the channel from the wallet seed. Please note that static
backups only allow users to request a force-close of the channel
with the remote node, so that funds not locked in HTLCs can be
recovered. This assumes that the remote node is still online, did
not lose its data, and accepts to force close the channel.
- This option is only available for standard wallets with an
Electrum seed. It is not available for hardware wallets, because
it requires a deterministic derivation of the nodeID. It is also
not available in watching-only wallets, for the same reason. If a
wallet can have recoverable channels but has an old nodeID, users
who want to use that feature need to close all their existing
channels, and to restore their wallet from seed.
- Channel recovery data uses 20 bytes (16 bytes of the remote
NodeID plus 4 magic bytes) and is encrypted so that only the
wallet that owns it can decrypt it. However, blockchain analysis
will be able to tell that the transaction was probably created by
Electrum.
- If the 'use recoverable channels' option is enabled, other nodes
cannot open a channel to Electrum.
- If a channel is force-closed, the information in the on-chain
backup is not sufficient to retrieve the funds in the to_local
output, in case the wallet is lost in a boating accident before
expiration of the CSV delay. For that reason, an additional
backup is presented to the user if they force-close a channel.
* Trampoline routing (option): Trampoline is a solution that allows
light clients to delegate path-finding on the Lightning Network, so
that they do not have to download the entire network
graph. Trampoline routing was originally proposed by Bastien
Teinturier and is used in the Phoenix wallet. Here is how
Trampoline works in Electrum:
- Trampoline is enabled by default, in order to prevent unwanted
download of the network gossip. If trampoline is disabled, the
gossip will be downloaded, regardless of the existence of
channels.
- Because there is no discovery mechanism for trampoline nodes, the
list of available trampolines is hardcoded in the client (it will
remain so until support for trampoline routing is announced in
gossip). 3 trampoline nodes are currently available on mainnet:
ACINQ, Electrum and Hodlister.
- If Trampoline is enabled:
- payments use trampoline routing.
- gossip is disabled.
- the wallet can only open channels with trampoline nodes.
- pre-existing channels with non-trampoline nodes are frozen for
sending.
- There are two types of trampoline payments: legacy and trampoline
end-to-end. Legacy payments are possible with any receiver, but
they offer less privacy than end-to-end trampoline
payments. Electrum decides whether to perform legacy or
end-to-end based on the features in the invoice:
- OPTION_TRAMPOLINE_ROUTING_OPT (bit 25) for Electrum
- OPTION_TRAMPOLINE_ROUTING_OPT_ECLAIR (bit 51) for Eclair/Phoenix
- When performing a legacy payment, Electrum will add a second
trampoline node to the route in order to protect the privacy of
the payer and payee. It will fall back to a single trampoline if
the two-trampoline strategy has failed for all trampolines.
(Note: two-trampoline payments are currently not possible if the
first trampoline is the ACINQ node, and is disabled for that
node.)
- Similar to Phoenix, the fee and CLTV delay are found by
trial-and-error. If there is a second trampoline in the route, we
use the same fee/CLTV for both. This trial-and-error is
temporary; the final specification should add fee information in
the failure messages, so that we will be able to better fine-tune
trampoline fees.
* Qt: The increase fee dialog now has advanced options, and offers
the choice between different RBF strategies.
* Watchtowers: The 'use_local_watchtower' feature is deprecated, and
it has been removed from the Qt GUI. The 'use_remote_watchtower'
setting has been renamed to 'use_watchtower'.
* Password unification (Android only): When the Android app is
started, the entered password is checked against all wallets in
the directory. If the test passes:
- all wallets are encrypted
- new wallets will use the unified password
- password updates are performed on all wallets
Whether the password is unified can be seen in the GUI: In the
'Settings' dialog, the description for the password setting is
'Change password for this wallet' if the password is not unified,
and becomes 'Change password' if password is unified.
* Submarine swaps are now available on kivy/android.
* Android PIN reset: If the password is unified, the PIN can be reset
by providing the password.
* Android: on-chain fees have been removed from the settings
dialog. Instead, the fee slider is shown to the user everytime an
on-chain transaction will be performed (sending a payment, opening
a channel, initiating a submarine swap)
* BIP-0350: use bech32m for witness version 1+ addresses (4315fa43).
We have supported sending to any witness version since Electrum
3.0, using BIP-0173 (bech32) addresses. BIP-0350 makes a breaking
change in address encoding, and recommends using a new encoding
(bech32m) for sending to witness version 1 and later.
* Block explorer: allow setting a custom URL in Qt GUI (#6965)
# Release 4.0.9 - (Dec 18, 2020)
* fixes a regression introduced in 4.0.8, that prevents from
paying BIP70 invoices (#6859)
* reflect frozen channels and disconnected peers in the displayed
'can send/can receive' amounts.
# Release 4.0.8 - (Dec 17, 2020)
* fix decoding BIP21 URIs with uppercase schema (d40bedb2)
* psbt: put full derivation paths into PSBT by default (c8155129)
* invoices: allow address-reuse (#6609, #6852)
* A few other minor bugfixes.
# Release 4.0.7 - (Dec 9, 2020)
* kivy: fix open channel with 'max' amount
* kivy: fix regression introduced in last release (a9fc440)
* other minor GUI fixes
* Dependencies: as part of adapting to new dnspython (#6828),
- python-ecdsa is no longer needed at all,
- cryptography is now required (min 2.6), the user can no
longer choose between cryptography and pycryptodomex
# Release 4.0.6 - (Dec 4, 2020)
* Fix 'Max' button issue for submarine swaps button (#6770)
* Fix 'Max' button in kivy (#6169)
* Various fixes for Kivy/Android install wizard
* More robust account keypath for BitBox02 (#6766)
# Release 4.0.5 - (Nov 18, 2020)
* Fix .dmg binary hanging on recently released macOS 11 Big Sur (#6461)
* Lightning:
- bugfix: during LN channel opening, if the client crashed at the
wrong moment, the channel might not get fully persisted to disk,
and would need manual console-tinkering to recover (#6656)
- Lightning is enabled by default. Electrum will not connect to
the Lightning Network until the user opens a channel. (#6639)
- smarter node recommendation (to open channels with) (#6705)
* user interface: some minor changes that aim to improve usability
* Ledger:
- fix enumerating devices with new bitcoin app (1.5.1) (b78cbcff)
- fix compat with HW.1 (200f547a)
* A few other minor bugfixes.
# Release 4.0.4 - (Oct 15, 2020)
* PSBT: fix regression in 4.0.3 where UTXO data was not included in
QR codes (#6600)
* new feature: "Cancel tx" (#6641). The Qt/kivy GUI allows cancelling
an unconfirmed RBF tx by double-spending its inputs to self.
* Windows binary:
- fix some issues with QR scanning by building zbar ourselves (#6593)
- when using setup exe, also install a debug binary (#6603)
* Ledger: fix "The derivation path is unusual" warnings (#6512)
(needs Bitcoin app 1.4.8+ installed on device)
* A few other minor bugfixes and usability improvements.
# Release 4.0.3 - (Sep 11, 2020)
* PSBT: restore compatibility with Bitcoin Core following CVE-2020-14199:
we now allow a PSBT input to have both UTXO and WITNESS_UTXO (#6429).
(PSBTs created since 4.0.1 already contained UTXO for segwit inputs)
* Hardware wallets:
- bitbox02: better multisig UX: implement get_soft_device_id (#6386)
- coldcard: fix "show address" for multisig (#6517)
- all: run all device communication on a dedicated thread (#6561).
This should resolve some threading issues.
* new feature: "Automated BIP39 recovery" (#6219, #6155)
When restoring from a BIP39 seed, add option to scan many known
derivation paths for history, and show them to user to choose from.
* show derivation path of keystores in Qt GUI Wallet>Information (#4700)
* fix "signtransaction" RPC command (#6502)
* Dependencies: pyaes is no longer needed (#6563)
* The tar.gz source dist now bundles make_libsecp256k1.sh, to help
users getting libsecp256k1 (#6323).
* A few other minor bugfixes and usability improvements.
# Release 4.0.2 - (July 8, 2020)
- rm old corrupted non-bip70 invoices (#6345)
- other minor fixes
# Release 4.0.1 - (July 3, 2020)
* Lightning Network support (experimental)
- Our implementation of Lightning relies on Electrum servers to
query channel states. Since servers can lie about the state of a
channel, users should either use a server that they trust, or
setup a private watchtower (see below). A watchtower is also
recommended for lightning wallets that remain offline for
extended periods of time (the default CSV 'to_self_delay' is 1
week). Please note that Electrum Personal Server (EPS) cannot be
used with lightning wallets, because channels funding addresses
are arbitrary.
- Lightning funds cannot be restored from seed. Instead, users need
to create static backups of their channels. Static backups cannot
be used to perform lightning transactions, they can only be used
to trigger a remote-force-close of a channel.
- Lightning-enabled wallet files must not be copied. Instead, a
backup of the wallet can be created from the Qt menu, and it will
contain static backups of all its channels. Backups can also be
exported for each channel (e.g. via QR code), and imported in
another wallet. Since backups are encrypted with a key derived
from the wallet's xpub, they can only be imported into another
instance of the same wallet, or a watch-only version of it. The
force-close is not triggered automatically when the backup is
imported; imported backups can live inside a wallet file.
- Lightning can be enabled in the GUI (Wallet>Information) or from
the CLI (init_lightning). Lightning is currently restricted to HD
p2wpkh wallets (including watch-only and hardware wallets). The
Qt GUI, CLI/RPC, and the kivy GUI (Android) all have LN support,
with feature-richness in that order.
- LN protocol details: dataloss_protect and static_remotekey are
required; varonion and payment_secret are implemented, MPP not yet.
Channels are not announced ('private'), forwarding is disabled.
We do not serve gossip queries, only consume them.
- Submarine swaps: the GUI integrates a service that offers
atomically exchanging on-chain and lightning bitcoins for a fee.
Electrum Technologies runs a central server for this, powered by
the Boltz backend.
- Watchtowers: Electrum can run a local watchtower (GUI setting),
or it can connect to a remote watchtower. A watchtower contains
pre-signed transactions and does not need your private keys. A
local watchtower will watch your channels whenever an Electrum
instance is running, without needing access to your wallet file.
An Electrum daemon can be configured to be used as a remote
watchtower by setting 'watchtower_address', 'watchtower_user' and
'watchtower_password'.
* Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (PSBT, BIP-174) are supported
(#5721). The previous Electrum partial transaction format is no
longer supported, i.e. this is an incompatible change. Users should
make sure that all instances of Electrum they use to co-sign or
offline sign, are updated together.
* Hardware wallets: several fixes in general; notable changes:
- The BitBox02 is now supported (#5993)
- Multisig support for Coldcard (#5440)
- Compatibility with latest Trezor fw (#6064, #6198, #5692)
* Dependencies (see README for install instructions):
- libsecp256k1 is now required (previously optional). python-ecdsa
remains a dependency but it is now only used for DNSSEC.
- Added: either one of pycryptodomex or cryptography is now required,
mainly due to LN (previously pycryptodomex was optional, for fast AES)
- Removed: jsonrpclib-pelix, the JSON-RPC library used for CLI/daemon
* Qt GUI: several changes, notably:
- Separation between output selection and transaction finalization.
- Coin selection moved to the Coins tab, and it affects all txns,
e.g. RBF fee-bumping, LN channel opens, submarine swaps.
- Editable tx preview dialog that allows e.g. changing the locktime,
toggling RBF, and manual coinjoins.
* HTTP PayServer: The configuration of a bitcoin-accepting website
using Electrum has been simplified and requires fewer steps (see
documentation). The Payserver supports BIP70 and Lightning payments.
* Android:
- We now build two APKs, one for ARMv7 and one for ARMv8
- The kivy GUI now supports importing BIP39 seeds
- Each wallet on kivy now can have a separate generic password,
using which the wallet files are encrypted. An optional PIN,
shared among all wallets, can be added to get prompted for spends.
* The API of several CLI/RPC commands have changed, and several new
commands have been introduced (mainly for LN).
* Distributables:
- The .tar.gz source dist is now built reproducibly.
Relatedly, we no longer distribute a .zip sdist.
- The MacOS binary now conforms to macOS 10.15; it is notarized
by Apple. This required bumping the min macOS version to 10.13.
Startup times should now be faster on 10.15. (#6128, #6225)
* Transactions:
- we now grind low R for ECDSA signatures to match bitcoind (#5820)
* Lots and lots of other minor bugfixes and improvements.
