Bitcoin Core 32 enters final testing, optimizing transaction fee estimation and block processing

According to CoinDesk, Bitcoin Core 32 entered its final testing phase on September 14, with the first candidate version marked, and the official release is expected on October 10. This version will not change Bitcoin's consensus rules but will mainly optimize fee estimation, accelerate block processing, and fix several security vulnerabilities.

In terms of fee estimation, Bitcoin Core 32 introduces a new estimator based on unconfirmed transactions, which can quickly lower the recommended fee rate when network congestion eases, compared to the original estimator based on historical block fees. Regarding block processing, nodes can now use multiple threads to fetch transaction data from the database simultaneously, with a default of 8 threads, reducing the waiting time for nodes to catch up with the blockchain.

For security fixes, developers have addressed a command execution vulnerability that has existed in non-Windows systems since Bitcoin Core 24. This vulnerability could allow authenticated users to execute commands on the node host through specially crafted wallet names when the walletnotify feature is enabled. Additionally, four commands used to create partially signed transactions will default to using PSBT version 2 format; the new web server was found to have a memory exhaustion flaw during auditing, where 16 unauthenticated REST connections could raise the node's memory from 46 MB to about 3 GB in approximately one minute, and this issue has been fixed before the official release.