• The Bitcoin Core project has released version v26.0, featuring new enhancements, bug fixes, and performance improvements.
• Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr has exposed a vulnerability exploited by “Inscriptions,” causing blockchain spam and network congestion.

While the crypto market is abuzz with talks around the BTC price movements, the Bitcoin core network gets a major upgrade simultaneously. The official Bitcoin Core project announced the latest release of Bitcoin Core, version v26.0.

The release, now available on the official Bitcoin Core website, also introduces new features, bug fixes, and performance enhancements, along with updated translations. Notable changes encompass experimental support for the v2 transport protocol defined in BIP324, improvements in P2P and network aspects, including nodes actively seeking outbound connections to multiple networks, enhancing resistance to eclipse and partition attacks.

Additionally, a new RPC, “submitpackage,” enables the submission of a list of raw hex transactions to the mempool for evaluation. However, the ability to create legacy wallets has been removed. Users can refer to the release note for detailed instructions on upgrading.

Bitcoin Core Developer Exposes Vulnerability

Bitcoin core developer Luke Dashjr has raised concerns about “Inscriptions” exploiting a vulnerability in Bitcoin Core, leading to blockchain spam and network congestion. The Bitcoin core developers team will address this issue in the upcoming v27 release next year, resulting in the cessation of Ordinals and BRC-20.

However, this decision has faced criticism from users and miners of ordinals and BRC-20, leading to an immediate 15% drop in ORDI price within an hour of the announcement. Dashjr made the revelation on December 6, emphasizing the developers’ efforts to eliminate Bitcoin inscriptions. He added;

Luke Dashjr explains that Bitcoin Core has provided users with the ability to set limits on additional data size in transactions using the “-datacarriersize” setting since 2013. Despite this feature, Inscriptions have discovered a method to circumvent this limit by disguising their data as program code.

This bug was recently fixed in Bitcoin Knots v25.1. It took longer than usual due to my workflow being severely disrupted at the end of last year (v24 was skipped entirely),

Bitcoin Core remains susceptible to vulnerabilities in its imminent v26 release, with hopes for a resolution before the v27 release next year, given the surge in unconfirmed transactions leading to network congestion. The current data from mempool.space indicates over 250,000 unconfirmed transactions on the network.

In addressing community concerns about potential income loss for miners if ordinals and BRC-20 cease to exist, he emphasizes that Bitcoin operates on consensus, relying on the honesty of the majority of miners to avoid harming the blockchain. Interestingly, spam-filtered blocks seem to command higher fees for some unknown reason.

Bitcoin Options Traders Eye $50,000

After a strong bullish surge earlier this week, the Bitcoin price is currently flirting around $44,000 levels. At press time, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading 0.25% down at $43,695 with a market cap of $854 billion.

Options traders are increasingly placing bullish bets, anticipating a surge in Bitcoin to reach $50,000 by January. This optimism aligns with market expectations that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will potentially greenlight exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to directly include the cryptocurrency during that period.