Who needs to upgrade?

All operators of a Bitcoin ABC full node must upgrade to the latest major version (0.29.2). This includes node operators, Avalanche staking nodes, Miners and Exchanges. The up-to-date node version is available at our Releases page.

Exactly when will the upgrade activate?

In order to activate reliably at a predictable time, the network upgrade uses the "Median Time Past" mechanism. The upgrade activates when the median of the last 11 blocks reaches timestamp 1715774400 (12:00:00 UTC on May 15th, 2024). This means that the upgrade doesn't actually activate exactly at that time, but typically about one hour later, when 6 blocks with timestamps greater than the activation time have been produced.

What features are included in the Network Upgrade?

There are no consensus changes activating at the upgrade, however the upgrade release includes the Chronik indexer as an opt-in option to the Bitcoin ABC node software for Linux and Windows.

Chronik gives you access to a brand new API to get notified of finalized blocks, retrieve transaction history by eCash address, gather eToken transaction data, and much more. To enable Chronik, simply turn it on with the -chronik option.

Take a look at the full Setup and API documentation to get an overview of the features, and start building your own application with the chronik-client npm package.

How do I upgrade?

The process of upgrading your node is straightforward: simply stop the currently running node, download the new version, and start the new version. Here are some example instructions for upgrading from version 0.28.12 to the latest version (0.29.2) on Linux:

• Shut down the node: ./bitcoin-abc-0.28.12/bin/bitcoin-cli stop
• Download the new version archive from the website: wget https://download.bitcoinabc.org/0.29.2/linux/bitcoin-abc-0.29.2-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
• Extract the archive: tar xzf bitcoin-abc-0.29.2-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
• Restart the node with the new version: ./bitcoin-abc-0.29.2/bin/bitcoind -daemon
• Clean up old version and archives (optional):
  • rm -rf bitcoin-abc-0.28.12
  • rm -f bitcoin-abc-0.28.12-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
  • rm -f bitcoin-abc-0.29.2-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz

Do I need to upgrade my wallet?

The network upgrade only affects full nodes. Other eCash software, including wallets such as Electrum ABC are not affected by the network upgrade.