DashCore v20.0 Product Brief

DashCore v20.0 is a major release and will be a mandatory upgrade for all masternodes, miners, and users. Version 20.0 introduces a number of features and improvements to Dash, including a ChainLock-based random beacon, Sentinel deprecation, expansion of the governance treasury, and numerous enhancements through Bitcoin backports. Below are a few key highlights of this release. Comprehensive details will be found in the release notes.

Following the approval of the EXPEDITE-60-20-20-REALLOCATION proposal, some features that support the release of Platform will not be activated as part of v20.0. Instead, Platform activation will align with the v21.0 release.

Release Highlights

ChainLock-based random beacon

To improve long-living masternode quorum (LLMQ) selection, the v20 hard fork in DashCore v20.0 will enable a new random beacon using ChainLock signatures as described in DIP29. ChainLock signatures will be stored in the coinbase transaction to be used as a source of randomness during quorum member calculations. This change increases the decentralization in the source of randomness and prevents masternodes or miners from being able to manipulate the LLMQ process.

Treasury expansion

Prior to DashCore v20.0, 10% of block rewards were set aside for the Dash DAO treasury which funds development and other network efforts. Once the DashCore v20.0 hard fork goes into effect on mainnet, the treasury system allotment will increase to 20% of block rewards to align with the proposal approved in September. Miner and masternode rewards will change to 20% and 60% respectively upon activation of the change. 

Sentinel deprecation

Sentinel functionality has been integrated directly into v20.0, so it will no longer be necessary for masternodes to run the standalone Sentinel application. Several RPC commands have been updated to prevent conflicts between DashCore v20.0 and existing Sentinel installs. It is recommended to remove or disable Sentinel after updating masternodes to v20.0.

Integration Partner Notes

DashCore v20.0 is a mandatory update due to updates to the coinbase transaction and changes to the block reward division between governance, masternodes, and miners. Once the release is available in the coming days, all integration partners should immediately review the Release Notes to become familiar with the details of the release and begin the update process.

In addition to the hard fork that will occur with v20.0, there are important fixes and optimizations that will not be backported to v19.0. It is important to verify compatibility with particular attention to 1) changes to RPCs, 2) changes to command-line options, and 3) Bitcoin backports.

Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Changes

DashCore v20.0 introduces three new Dash-specific RPC commands, deprecates a set of RPCs, and removes one RPC. Additionally, several RPCs have breaking changes.

New RPCs: protx listdiff, getindexinfo, and gettxchainlocks

Deprecated RPCs: all protx commands previously ending with _hpmn were converted to _evo

Removed RPC: gobject vote-conf

Breaking changes: getaddressinfo, getblockchaininfo, getblocktemplate, and gobject submit 

Command-line Options

A number of command-line option changes were made related to node and network management. For additional details on these, please refer to the release notes.

Bitcoin Backports

We have backported hundreds of items from Bitcoin v0.20-v22.0 which are included in DashCore v20.0. In addition, select items have been backported from Bitcoin v23.0 and v25.0.

What is Dash?

Dash is a global payments network with its own cryptocurrency offering businesses and individuals instant payments for less than a cent per transaction. Our goal is to provide users with a better way to pay and get paid. Dash Core Group is in the process of rolling out a series of upgrades to our system dubbed “Evolution” to make Dash the most user-friendly blockchain-based payment and Web3 application platform in the world.