Fulcrum 2.0

What's New:

This is a major release of Fulcrum which adds much-needed reliability and performance improvements.

The database format has been completely redone and now Fulcrum provides reliability guarantees such that Fulcrum's db can no longer get corrupted. In other words, you should never see the dreaded "your database is corrupt, please resynch"-style messages, even if Fulcrum is killed at an inopportune time.

Since the database format has been completely redone, the database is no longer backward compatible with older Fulcrum versions, but you can upgrade your existing database to the new format by passing the one-time flag --db-upgrade the first time you run Fulcrum 2.0 when upgrading from a 1.x install.

Brief Summary: What's New in 2.0

A brief summary of what Fulcrum 2.0 offers vs the 1.x series:

• Database Reliability - one of the main weaknesses of Fulcrum 1.x was that should the process be killed at an inopportune time, or should abrupt powerloss or kernel-level crash occur at an inopportune time, there was always a risk that the datadir would get corrupted and the admin would be forced to do a full database resynch. This is no longer the case!
  • Fulcrum 2.x series will no longer suffer from this problem and the process can be killed at any time (including abrupt powerloss), without any database corruption. At worst the last few blocks worth of data is rolled-back and Fulcrum will re-synch from the rollback point.
  • It is still recommended that admins gracefully shut-down Fulcrum, however, via SIGINT/SIGTERM/SIGQUIT (either from their init/systemd scripts or via kill -TERM <pid>, etc), and wait for it to terminate. This maximizes performance and minimizes startup times for Fulcrum the next time it is restarted.
• Platform Neutrality - database format is now 100% platform-neutral. This means it should be possible to always copy datadirs around regardless if transferring them from Windows, Linux, BSD, macOS, and regardless of platform architecture (including big endian platforms).
• Improved database performance.

Upgrading from the Fulcrum 1.x Series

Upgrade Instructions

Fulcrum 2.0 has a different database format than the 1.x series. As such, you have two options for upgrading:

• Create a blank new datadir and just re-synch from block 0 (slow, but 100% reliable)
• Upgrade your existing 1.x datadir (faster, but irreversible and destructice)

To upgade your existing database, be sure to pass the one-time --db-upgrade flag to Fulcrum. It will refuse to start up if it detects that your datadir is in the old format and you did not pass this flag. This ensures that admins know what they are getting into.

Note: The upgrade process takes seconds to minutes on BCH and BTC testnet(s), maybe ~15 minutes on BCH mainnet, and around an hour or more (depending on hardware) on BTC mainnet.

--utxo-cache Removed

The --utxo-cache option has been completely removed. If you want to temporarily leverage memory to help out initial synch, use a temporary --db_mem (CLI) or db_mem= setting in the conf file to give Fulcrum more memory for initial synch, stop Fulcrum, then set it down again to a smaller value for continued operations.

Critical Note On Upgrading the DB from 1.x -> 2.0

Let it run to completion!

While Fulcrum 2.0 is 100% reliable and may be killed at any time during its operation -- there is one exception to this rule: the upgrade process that converts 1.x databases -> 2.0. As such please let the upgrade process run to completion and do not kill, stop, molest, or otherwise abuse the Fulcrum process while it's upgrading the DB!!. If you do, the old 1.x database will be lost and your 2.0 database will also be corrupted.

You have been warned!

---

Detailed Summary of Changes:

• Completely redid the database format to leverage rockskdb atomicity and reliability guarantees.
• Added --db-upgrade CLI arg (required to upgrade an existing DB from Fulcrum 1.x to 2.0 format)
• Added some performance improvements to the rocksdb database
  • Made some tables use point-lookup optimizations
  • Made all tables use 2-level indexing which is more appropriate for the way Fulcrum data is laid out
  • Made some of the tables' keys be properly sorted (such as scripthash_history) -- they were not always completely sorted in an optimal fashion before, which cost a few cycles sometimes.
  • Changes to make better use of db_mem db memory (should also help slightly reduce memory consumption)
  • More forcefully enforce rocksdb kNoCompression for all levels.
• Made the database format have a specifiec endian-ness for all data and so the database is completely cross-platform. You should now be able to copy any Fulcrum datadir from any OS and architecture to any other OS and architecture, regardless of endianness, word size, etc.
• Got rid of the entire --utxo-cache mechanism (it's no longer compatible with Fulcrum's newfound data reliability guarantees).
• db_mem now defauls to 2048 GiB or 25% of total physical memory, whichever is smaller
• db_max_open_files now defaults to 1000 (was: 40)
• Internal misc. other performance fixups
• Internal code quality improvements
• Removal of some dead/unused code
• Redid some aspects of the internal unit test system, and added some unit tests
• Various build system and misc. compile issue fixes

---

Pre-compiled Binaries for Linux

I have provided two pre-built binaries for Linux:

• Fulcrum-2.0.0-x86_64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 18.04 system using Docker.
• Fulcrum-2.0.0-arm64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 22.04 system (for ARM64 bit) using Docker.

All of the above binaries contain jemalloc, libzmq, libminiupnpc, Qt5Core, Qt5Network (from Qt 5.15.6), OpenSSL 1.1.1 and libstdc++ statically linked. They still require libz2, and the right libc version as dynamic libs on your system (but those are usually present if you are on a recent system).

Pre-compiled Binaries for Windows

• Fulcrum-2.0.0-win64.zip - Pre-built, statically linked Windows version.
  • It should "just work" on any Windows 10 or above 64-bit system.
  • Includes is a statically-linked Fulcrum.exe, built with jemalloc, libzmq, libminiupnpc, Qt 5.15.13, OpenSSL 3.3.0, and gcc 13.2.0.
  • Additionally, FulcrumAdmin.exe is included which is the python script, but made into a onefile .exe using PyInstaller.
    • NOTE Windows virus scanners have been known to erroneously identify FulcrumAdmin.exe as containing a virus. This is because many heuristic scanners dislike the use of PyInstaller onefile .exe's. See: #203. Please ignore this -- we contain no viruses! Also please complain to your virus software vendor about this.

---

See the .asc file for signatures; I signed the sha256 hashes of all the release binaries. My gpg public key can be obtained here: https://github.com/Electron-Cash/keys-n-hashes/blob/master/pubkeys/calinkey.txt

---

Binary builds for macOS coming soon -- Until then you can always build from source!

Fulcrum 2.0 Pre-Release 1 (Beta)

This is a beta test and/or pre-release version of Fulcrum 2.0.

While it has been thoroughly tested by me here on several machines -- and should be very stable -- there have been massive modifications to the database format and/or other Fulcrum internals. As such, it is best if cautious admins don't run this version until it is officially released, and more adventuresome admins that are willing to test beta software do.

Note that, like I said, it should be very stable.

Brief Summary: What's New in 2.0

A brief summary of what Fulcrum 2.0 offers vs the 1.x series:

• Database Reliability - one of the main weaknesses of Fulcrum 1.x was that should the process be killed at an inopportune time, or should abrupt powerloss or kernel-level crash occur at an inopportune time, there was always a risk that the datadir would get corrupted and the admin would be forced to do a full database resynch. This is no longer the case!
  • Fulcrum 2.x series will no longer suffer from this problem and the process can be killed at any time (including abrupt powerloss), without any database corruption. At worst the last few blocks worth of data is rolled-back and Fulcrum will re-synch from the rollback point.
  • It is still recommended that admins gracefully shut-down Fulcrum, however, via SIGINT/SIGTERM/SIGQUIT (either from their init/systemd scripts or via kill -TERM <pid>, etc), and wait for it to terminate. This maximizes performance and minimizes startup times for Fulcrum the next time it is restarted.
• Database format is now 100% platform-neutral. This means it should be possible to always copy datadirs around regardless of whether one is transferring them from Windows, Linux, BSD, macOS, and regardless of platform architecture (including big endian platforms).
• Improved performance.

Upgrading from the Fulcrum 1.x Series

Upgrade Instructions

Fulcrum 2.0 has a different database format than the 1.x series. As such, you have two options for upgrading:

• Create a blank new datadir and just re-synch from block 0 (slow, but 100% reliable)
• Upgrade your existing 1.x datadir (faster, but irreversible and destructice)

To upgade your existing database, be sure to pass the one-time --db-upgrade flag to Fulcrum. It will refuse to start up if it detects that your datadir is in the old format and you did not pass this flag. This ensures that admins know what they are getting into.

Note

The --utxo-cache option has been completely removed. If you want to temporarily leverage memory to help out initial synch, use a temporary --db_mem (CLI) or db_mem= setting in the conf file to give Fulcrum more memory for initial synch, stop Fulcrum, then set it down again to a smaller value for operations.

Critical Note On Upgrading the DB from 1.x -> 2.0

Let it run to completion!

While Fulcrum 2.0 is 100% reliable and may be killed at any time during its operation -- there is one exception to this rule: the upgrade process that converts 1.x databases -> 2.0. As such please let the upgrade process run to completion and do not kill, stop, molest, or otherwise abuse the Fulcrum process while it's upgrading the DB!!. If you do, the old 1.x database will be lost and your 2.0 database will also be corrupted.

You have been warned!

Fulcrum 1.12.0

What's new:

This release of Fulcrum adds UPnP support for Fulcrum. This allows automatic port mapping for installs behind NAT firewalls. Enable with --upnp from the CLI or upnp=true in the conf file. In addition, the bitcoind ZMQ hashtx message is now supported (if configured on the bitcoind side, also needs to be enabled on the Fulcrum side with conf arg: zmq_allow_hashtx=true).

Also included in this release are some mempool-related performance improvements and some internal code quality improvements.

---

Summary of changes:

• Added support for UPnP. Requires the libminiupnpc library be detected and linked at compiled-time (this is the case for the released static builds). UPnP is not used by default, but enable it if you are behind a NAT firewall and your router supports UPnP. You can use this new feature to automatically open up any non-loopback ports to the internet for incoming connections. (Enabled with CLI: --upnp/conf file: upnp=1) (#280).
• Added support for bitcoind's ZMQ pubhashtx message. This means Fulcrum can be instantly-notified when new txn's show up in the bitcoind mempool and as such it should reduce latency for Fulcrum to "see" new mempool txns, at the expense of more CPU utilization. This support is off by default but can be enabled with conf file arg: zmq_allow_hashtx=true (#262).
• Improved Fulcrum's mempool model efficiency by adding parent/child links for txns (this change makes mempool txn removal faster and as a consequence it makes block processing faster for new blocks being added to the chain tip and being reconciled with the mempool) (#265).
• Fixed a rare and esoteric bug where Fulcrum would announce its TCP/SSL/WS/WSS port(s) to peers even if it was actually listening on a loopback interface for those ports (thus the announcement was useless and should ideally not show up/be suppressed).
• Added support for Unix domain sockets in ZeroMQ notifications. (@doitwithnotepad, #267)
• Assorted code quality/readability/etc improvements.

---

Pre-compiled binaries for Linux

I have provided two pre-built binaries for Linux:

• Fulcrum-1.12.0-x86_64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 18.04 system using Docker.
• Fulcrum-1.12.0-arm64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 20.04 system (for ARM64 bit) using Docker.

All of the above binaries contain jemalloc, libzmq, libminiupnpc, Qt5Core, Qt5Network (from Qt 5.15.6), OpenSSL 1.1.1 and libstdc++ statically linked. They still require libz2, and the right libc version as dynamic libs on your system (but those are usually present if you are on a recent system).

Pre-compiled binaries for Windows

• Fulcrum-1.12.0-win64.zip - Pre-built, statically linked Windows version.
  • It should "just work" on any Windows 10 or above 64-bit system.
  • Includes is a statically-linked Fulcrum.exe, built with jemalloc, libzmq, libminiupnpc, Qt 5.15.13, OpenSSL 3.3.0, and gcc 13.2.0.
  • Additionally, FulcrumAdmin.exe is included which is the python script, but made into a onefile .exe using PyInstaller.
    • NOTE Windows virus scanners have been known to erroneously identify FulcrumAdmin.exe as containing a virus. This is because many heuristic scanners dislike the use of PyInstaller onefile .exe's. See: #203. Please ignore this -- we contain no viruses! Also please complain to your virus software vendor about this.

---

See the .asc file for signatures; I signed the sha256 hashes of all the release binaries. My gpg public key can be obtained here: https://github.com/Electron-Cash/keys-n-hashes/blob/master/pubkeys/calinkey.txt

---

Binary builds for macOS coming soon -- Until then you can always build from source!

Fulcrum 1.11.1

What's new:

This is a minor update to Fulcrum. The most significant feature added is support for BTC's new testnet4, which was recently merged into Core master but is as yet unreleased. BCH and LTC users of Fulcrum don't really have a pressing need to upgrade to this release, but are welcome to do so to take advantage of the minor performance fix contained in this release.

---

Summary of changes:

• Added BTC testnet4 support (auto-detected) #255. Requires a bitcoin core bitcoind built to support this new chain.
  • There are currently 2 active servers, one Fulcrum, the other ElectrumX that serve blockchain data for testnet4.
• Slight performance improvement to the UTXO Cache pre-fetcher mechanism
• Various code quality fixes and nits

---

Pre-compiled binaries for Linux

I have provided two pre-built binaries for Linux:

• Fulcrum-1.11.1-x86_64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 18.04 system using Docker.
• Fulcrum-1.11.1-arm64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 20.04 system (for ARM64 bit) using Docker.

All of the above binaries contain jemalloc, libzmq, Qt5Core, Qt5Network (from Qt 5.15.6), OpenSSL 1.1.1 and libstdc++ statically linked. They still require libz2, and the right libc version as dynamic libs on your system (but those are usually present if you are on a recent system).

Pre-compiled binaries for Windows

• Fulcrum-1.11.1-win64.zip - Pre-built, statically linked Windows version.
  • It should "just work" on any Windows 10 or above 64-bit system.
  • Includes is a statically-linked Fulcrum.exe, built with jemalloc, libzmq, Qt 5.15.13, OpenSSL 3.3.0, and gcc 13.2.0.
  • Additionally, FulcrumAdmin.exe is included which is the python script, but made into a onefile .exe using PyInstaller.
    • NOTE Windows virus scanners have been known to erroneously identify FulcrumAdmin.exe as containing a virus. This is because many heuristic scanners dislike the use of PyInstaller onefile .exe's. See: #203. Please ignore this -- we contain no viruses! Also please complain to your virus software vendor about this.

---

See the .asc file for signatures; I signed the sha256 hashes of all the release binaries. My gpg public key can be obtained here: https://github.com/Electron-Cash/keys-n-hashes/blob/master/pubkeys/calinkey.txt

---

Binary builds for macOS coming soon -- Until then you can always build from source!

Fulcrum 1.11.0

What's new:

This release brings with it performance improvements and an update to the pre-built binary's compiled-in RocksDB version (updated to latest 9.2.1). The latest RocksDB is faster and also better, so yay!

Also in this release we switched the Linux pre-built binary to statically-link libstdc++ which should improve compatibility for the binary and have it "just work" on a wider variety of systems.

NOTE: Since this release contains an updated RocksDB in the release binary, RocksDB will internally "upgrade" the data dir to the newer RocksDB format on first-run (this is fast). However, this means that users that run this version cannot "go back" to the previous Fulcrum versions before 1.11.0 with the same data dir, because RocksDB is backwards compatible but not "forward compatible".

---

Summary of changes:

• Rename CLI/conf file option --fast-sync -> --utxo-cache
  • Also renamed various conf file options that contain hyphens in their names (-) to also work with _ instead (e.g. ts-format -> ts_format), so that they can be passed-in from env. vars.
  • Old option names that were renamed still are supported.
• Switched codebase to use C++20. As a result of this, we also redid the static builds to use newer tools (e.g. gcc 13) and to also statically link libstdc++.
• Switched pre-built binaries to use newer RocksDB v9.2.1. This breaks "forward compatibility" with previous Fulcrum releases, but should bring in performance and stability improvements from latest RocksDB.
• Fixes for compatibility between datadirs copied between Windows & Unix (they should all be interoperable now).
• Updated static pre-built binaries to use latest libzmq and libjemalloc
• Performance optimizations related to RPA indexing, in particular, testnets as well as low-core-count machines should benefit from the improvements.
• Controller: Ensure download blocks tasks use all physical CPUs.
• IPv6: Render ip6:port as [ip6]:port in user-facing strings. Also accept this notation from the conf. file
• Various fixups related to C++20 in the codebase such as fix some compile warnings, update to newer idioms such as: C++20 concept/requires replaced older std::enable_if, etc.
• Fix for compiling against Qt 6.7.1
• Fixed typos in fulcrum-example-config.conf & fulcrum-quick-config.conf
• RPC: Support downloading of >1GiB blocks from bitcoind (requires Qt6)
• Fixed assert() in Controller.cpp -- before this fix "Debug" builds were not working with RPA (oops! Fixed!).
• Refreshed BCH & BTC compiled-in server lists
• Fix to support BU chipnet (which is reported as "chipnet" rather than "chip" by BU).
• Added FulcrumAdmin to the dockerhub docker image.
• Misc. internal code quality nits, tweaks and fixes; various compiler warning fixups

---

Pre-compiled binaries for Linux

I have provided two pre-built binaries for Linux:

• Fulcrum-1.11.0-x86_64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 18.04 system using Docker.
• Fulcrum-1.11.0-arm64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 20.04 system (for ARM64 bit) using Docker.

All of the above binaries contain jemalloc, libzmq, Qt5Core, Qt5Network (from Qt 5.15.6), OpenSSL 1.1.1 and libstdc++ statically linked. They still require libz2, and the right libc version as dynamic libs on your system (but those are usually present if you are on a recent system).

Pre-compiled binaries for Windows

• Fulcrum-1.11.0-win64.zip - Pre-built, statically linked Windows version.
  • It should "just work" on any Windows 10 or above 64-bit system.
  • Includes is a statically-linked Fulcrum.exe, built with jemalloc, libzmq, Qt 5.15.13, OpenSSL 3.3.0, and gcc 13.2.0.
  • Additionally, FulcrumAdmin.exe is included which is the python script, but made into a onefile .exe using PyInstaller.
    • NOTE Windows virus scanners have been known to erroneously identify FulcrumAdmin.exe as containing a virus. This is because many heuristic scanners dislike the use of PyInstaller onefile .exe's. See: #203. Please ignore this -- we contain no viruses! Also please complain to your virus software vendor about this.

---

See the .asc file for signatures; I signed the sha256 hashes of all the release binaries. My gpg public key can be obtained here: https://github.com/Electron-Cash/keys-n-hashes/blob/master/pubkeys/calinkey.txt

---

Binary builds for macOS coming soon -- Until then you can always build from source!

Fulcrum 1.10.0

What's new:

Added official Reusable Payment Address (RPA) support. A few new RPCs are offered for servers that have it enabled (default on for BCH only, off for other coins). Also fixed a few minor esoteric bugs.

---

Summary of changes:

• Added RPA support (#234 ). This work was community-funded. Thanks to all the contributors to my flipstarter that helped pay for this work.
  • Added a new index, rpa, which is currently only ~42M on mainnet. It starts indexing from block 825000 on mainnet (can be controlled with rpa_start_height= conf file option).
  • RPA is only on-by-default for BCH, off for all other coins. Can be manually enabled/disabled with --rpa or rpa=1 from conf file.
  • A few new RPCs are offered to clients if the index is enabled.
  • Bumped Electrum Cash protocol version to 1.5.3
• Bugfix: Deal with esoteric 0-input and 0-output txns better (even though they can't happen due to consensus, there was a uint wraparound issue if they do happen to be encountered in some esoteric environments). Fixes #235.
• Bugfix: In rare circumstances, if the "Download Blocks Task" is interrupted / gets an error, one of the 3 BitcoinD client threads may go out to lunch and never become usable again to do work. Symptoms would include it spamming "Reconnecting ..." messages to the log every 5 seconds. This has been corrected.
• Lots of code refactoring and code fixups.

---

Pre-compiled binaries for Linux

I have provided two pre-built binaries for Linux:

• Fulcrum-1.10.0-x86_64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 18.04 system using Docker.
• Fulcrum-1.10.0-arm64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 20.04 system (for ARM64 bit) using Docker.
• Fulcrum-1.10.0-x86_64-linux-ub16.tar.gz, which is compiled on a stock Ubuntu 16.04 system (using Docker) but with g++ 8.1.0 installed from this ppa source: ppa:jonathonf/gcc-8 & ppa:jonathonf/gcc

All 3 of the above binaries contain jemalloc, libzmq, Qt5Core, Qt5Network (from Qt 5.15.6), and OpenSSL 1.1.1 statically linked. They still require libz2, libstd++, and the right libc version as dynamic libs on your system (but those are usually present if you are on a recent system).

If the first regular -linux binary fails, try the second one (-linux-ub16), which should work on older systems, hopefully.

Pre-compiled binaries for Windows

• Fulcrum-1.10.0-win64.zip - Pre-built, statically linked Windows version.
  • It should "just work" on any Windows 10 or above 64-bit system.
  • Includes is a statically-linked Fulcrum.exe, built with jemalloc, libzmq, Qt 5.15.2, OpenSSL 3.0.1, and gcc 11.2.0.
  • Additionally, FulcrumAdmin.exe is included which is the python script, but made into a onefile .exe using PyInstaller.
    • NOTE Windows virus scanners have been known to erroneously identify FulcrumAdmin.exe as containing a virus. This is because many heuristic scanners dislike the use of PyInstaller onefile .exe's. See: #203. Please ignore this -- we contain no viruses! Also please complain to your virus software vendor about this.

---

See the .asc file for signatures; I signed the sha256 hashes of all the release binaries. My gpg public key can be obtained here: https://github.com/Electron-Cash/keys-n-hashes/blob/master/pubkeys/calinkey.txt

---

Binary builds for macOS coming soon -- Until then you can always build from source!

Fulcrum 1.9.8

What's new:

This is a minor correctness improvement release of Fulcrum. See issue #221. Upgrading to this release is optional but is strongly recommended for BTC (and LTC) node operators since the fix contained in this release affects them. (BCH users are unaffected.)

---

Summary of changes:

• Fixed a correctness bug whereby the mempool fee histogram returned by the mempool.get_fee_histogram RPC was calculating fees in sats-per-serialized-byte and not sats-per-vbyte. This affects segwit coins like LTC and BTC. BCH users are unaffected.
  • As a result of the histogram using the wrong fee rate (sats/B rather than sats/vB), the results were a bit too optimistic and painted a picture of a lower-fee situation than actually exists in the real mempool (this is because serialized size almost always is >= vsize, so fees computed as sats/B are usually lower than fees computed in sats/vB). See issue #221
  • It is recommended that BTC and LTC server operators upgrade to Fulcrum v1.9.8 at their earliest convenience.
  • Fee estimates and "distance from tip" if using Electrum BTC should now be more accurate and more in-line with what a wallet connected to ElectrumX servers would see.
• Some internal code refactoring and code cleanup to reduce boilerplate code in src/bitcoin/transaction.h and src/bitcoin/transaction.cpp.

---

Pre-compiled binaries for Linux

I have provided two pre-built binaries for Linux:

• Fulcrum-1.9.8-x86_64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 18.04 system using Docker.
• Fulcrum-1.9.8-arm64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 20.04 system (for ARM64 bit) using Docker.
• Fulcrum-1.9.8-x86_64-linux-ub16.tar.gz, which is compiled on a stock Ubuntu 16.04 system (using Docker) but with g++ 8.1.0 installed from this ppa source: ppa:jonathonf/gcc-8 & ppa:jonathonf/gcc

All 3 of the above binaries contain jemalloc, libzmq, Qt5Core, Qt5Network (from Qt 5.15.6), and OpenSSL 1.1.1 statically linked. They still require libz2, libstd++, and the right libc version as dynamic libs on your system (but those are usually present if you are on a recent system).

If the first regular -linux binary fails, try the second one (-linux-ub16), which should work on older systems, hopefully.

Pre-compiled binaries for Windows

• Fulcrum-1.9.8-win64.zip - Pre-built, statically linked Windows version.
  • It should "just work" on any Windows 10 or above 64-bit system.
  • Includes is a statically-linked Fulcrum.exe, built with jemalloc, libzmq, Qt 5.15.2, OpenSSL 3.0.1, and gcc 11.2.0.
  • Additionally, FulcrumAdmin.exe is included which is the python script, but made into a onefile .exe using PyInstaller.
    • NOTE Windows virus scanners have been known to erroneously identify FulcrumAdmin.exe as containing a virus. This is because many heuristic scanners dislike the use of PyInstaller onefile .exe's. See: #203. Please ignore this -- we contain no viruses! Also please complain to your virus software vendor about this.

---

See the .asc file for signatures; I signed the sha256 hashes of all the release binaries. My gpg public key can be obtained here: https://github.com/Electron-Cash/keys-n-hashes/blob/master/pubkeys/calinkey.txt

---

Binary builds for macOS coming soon -- Until then you can always build from source!

Fulcrum 1.9.7

What's new:

This is a bugfix release of Fulcrum. A very rare corner-case "abort" bug introduced in version 1.9.4 has been identified and fixed. See issue #214. While this bug is very rare and requires precise timing to occur, please do upgrade to 1.9.7 if you are running 1.9.4, 1.9.5 or 1.9.6 (1.9.3 and earlier are unaffected).

---

Summary of changes:

• Fixed a rare corner-case race condition leading to a potential "abort" out of Fulcrum (server death), in very rare cases while synching mempool. It wouldn't lead to data corruption but could be highly annoying. Probability of it occurring was close-to-but-not-0. See issue #214 and commit 34a825a.

---

Pre-compiled binaries for Linux

I have provided two pre-built binaries for Linux:

• Fulcrum-1.9.7-x86_64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 18.04 system using Docker.
• Fulcrum-1.9.7-arm64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 20.04 system (for ARM64 bit) using Docker.
• Fulcrum-1.9.7-x86_64-linux-ub16.tar.gz, which is compiled on a stock Ubuntu 16.04 system (using Docker) but with g++ 8.1.0 installed from this ppa source: ppa:jonathonf/gcc-8 & ppa:jonathonf/gcc

All 3 of the above binaries contain jemalloc, libzmq, Qt5Core, Qt5Network (from Qt 5.15.6), and OpenSSL 1.1.1 statically linked. They still require libz2, libstd++, and the right libc version as dynamic libs on your system (but those are usually present if you are on a recent system).

If the first regular -linux binary fails, try the second one (-linux-ub16), which should work on older systems, hopefully.

Pre-compiled binaries for Windows

• Fulcrum-1.9.7-win64.zip - Pre-built, statically linked Windows version.
  • It should "just work" on any Windows 10 or above 64-bit system.
  • Includes is a statically-linked Fulcrum.exe, built with jemalloc, libzmq, Qt 5.15.2, OpenSSL 3.0.1, and gcc 11.2.0.
  • Additionally, FulcrumAdmin.exe is included which is the python script, but made into a onefile .exe using PyInstaller.
    • NOTE Windows virus scanners have been known to erroneously identify FulcrumAdmin.exe as containing a virus. This is because many heuristic scanners dislike the use of PyInstaller onefile .exe's. See: #203. Please ignore this -- we contain no viruses! Also please complain to your virus software vendor about this.

---

See the .asc file for signatures; I signed the sha256 hashes of all the release binaries. My gpg public key can be obtained here: https://github.com/Electron-Cash/keys-n-hashes/blob/master/pubkeys/calinkey.txt

---

Binary builds for macOS coming soon -- Until then you can always build from source!

Fulcrum 1.9.6

What's new:

This is a minor protocol upgrade release of Fulcrum. 4 new protocol methods were added (not yet used by any major wallet, but they will be hopefully someday!). Additionally, some minor internal improvements were made, and the Windows binary now also prints in color if outputting to the console.

---

Summary of changes:

• Protocol version was updated to 1.5.2.
  • 4 new protocol methods were added. For more information please see the Electrum Cash Protocol Documentation.
• Added a new optional conf file parameter daemon_passthrough_subnets.
  • This was added to affect the operation of the new (disabled by default) RPC method daemon.passthrough.
  • See the example config for more information.
• Changed the way --fast-sync is enforced. Fixes issue #208.
• Made sure the arm64 static build uses Ubuntu 20 as the base docker image for extra compatibility. Issue #209.
• Made the Windows build output color to the console. Commit 40a27ed.
• Miscellaneous internal fixups and cleanup.
  • Fixed some GCC 13 compiler warnings. Commit 40a27ed.
  • The testing code for --bench mempool now can download real coins from a bitcoind daemon (optionally) to go along with the mempool.dat file it ingests. Commit 74338ba.

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Pre-compiled binaries for Linux

I have provided two pre-built binaries for Linux:

• Fulcrum-1.9.6-x86_64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 18.04 system using Docker.
• Fulcrum-1.9.6-arm64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 20.04 system (for ARM64 bit) using Docker.
• Fulcrum-1.9.6-x86_64-linux-ub16.tar.gz, which is compiled on a stock Ubuntu 16.04 system (using Docker) but with g++ 8.1.0 installed from this ppa source: ppa:jonathonf/gcc-8 & ppa:jonathonf/gcc

All 3 of the above binaries contain jemalloc, libzmq, Qt5Core, Qt5Network (from Qt 5.15.6), and OpenSSL 1.1.1 statically linked. They still require libz2, libstd++, and the right libc version as dynamic libs on your system (but those are usually present if you are on a recent system).

If the first regular -linux binary fails, try the second one (-linux-ub16), which should work on older systems, hopefully.

Pre-compiled binaries for Windows

• Fulcrum-1.9.6-win64.zip - Pre-built, statically linked Windows version.
  • It should "just work" on any Windows 10 or above 64-bit system.
  • Includes is a statically-linked Fulcrum.exe, built with jemalloc, libzmq, Qt 5.15.2, OpenSSL 3.0.1, and gcc 11.2.0.
  • Additionally, FulcrumAdmin.exe is included which is the python script, but made into a onefile .exe using PyInstaller.
    • NOTE Windows virus scanners have been known to erroneously identify FulcrumAdmin.exe as containing a virus. This is because many heuristic scanners dislike the use of PyInstaller onefile .exe's. See: #203. Please ignore this -- we contain no viruses! Also please complain to your virus software vendor about this.

---

See the .asc file for signatures; I signed the sha256 hashes of all the release binaries. My gpg public key can be obtained here: https://github.com/Electron-Cash/keys-n-hashes/blob/master/pubkeys/calinkey.txt

---

Binary builds for macOS coming soon -- Until then you can always build from source!

Fulcrum 1.9.5

What's new:

This is a hotfix release. 1.9.4 was a lemon -- it contained a bug whereby the server would hang waiting for the mempool (due to inappropriate use of thread variable signals). It has been fixed. I sincerely apologize for the error on my part. All users of 1.9.4 should upgrade to 1.9.5 immediately.

Otherwise, 1.9.4 was a good improvement for performance. 1.9.5 is just like 1.9.4 except it lacks the synch hang bug.

Release notes from 1.9.4:

• This is a bugfix + performance improvement release of Fulcrum. In this release, the performance of mempool synching from bitcoind has been improved by as much as ~30% for large mempools. Additionally, a rare corner-case bug related to mempool synching has been fixed. It is recommended that all admins running public Fulcrum servers update to v1.9.4 at their earliest convenience.

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Summary of changes (vs 1.9.3):

• Performance! - Improved the performance of the SynchMempoolTask by ~30% for large mempools. This is particularly important when Fulcrum first starts up against a daemon that has chronically full mempools (such as on BTC). (#207).
• Bugfix - A rare corner-case bug involving unsent scripthash notifications during some unlikely-but-possible mempool scenarios has been fixed. (#207).
• Miscellaneous:
  • macOS: The source tree now includes a "fat" binary for librocksdb.a which work on both x86_64 and arm64 (Apple Silicon).
  • Refactored the SynchMempoolTask to a separate compilation unit
  • Other small nits.

---

Pre-compiled binaries for Linux

I have provided two pre-built binaries for Linux:

• Fulcrum-1.9.5-x86_64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 18.04 system using Docker.
• Fulcrum-1.9.5-arm64-linux.tar.gz, which is compiled on an Ubuntu 20.04 system (for ARM64 bit) using Docker.
• Fulcrum-1.9.5-x86_64-linux-ub16.tar.gz, which is compiled on a stock Ubuntu 16.04 system (using Docker) but with g++ 8.1.0 installed from this ppa source: ppa:jonathonf/gcc-8 & ppa:jonathonf/gcc

All 3 of the above binaries contain jemalloc, libzmq, Qt5Core, Qt5Network (from Qt 5.15.6), and OpenSSL 1.1.1 statically linked. They still require libz2, libstd++, and the right libc version as dynamic libs on your system (but those are usually present if you are on a recent system).

If the first regular -linux binary fails, try the second one (-linux-ub16), which should work on older systems, hopefully.

Pre-compiled binaries for Windows

• Fulcrum-1.9.5-win64.zip - Pre-built, statically linked Windows version.
  • It should "just work" on any Windows 10 or above 64-bit system.
  • Includes is a statically-linked Fulcrum.exe, built with jemalloc, libzmq, Qt 5.15.2, OpenSSL 3.0.1, and gcc 11.2.0.
  • Additionally, FulcrumAdmin.exe is included which is the python script, but made into a onefile .exe using PyInstaller.
    • NOTE Windows virus scanners have been known to erroneously identify FulcrumAdmin.exe as containing a virus. This is because many heuristic scanners dislike the use of PyInstaller onefile .exe's. See: #203. Please ignore this -- we contain no viruses! Also please complain to your virus software vendor about this.

---

See the .asc file for signatures; I signed the sha256 hashes of all the release binaries. My gpg public key can be obtained here: https://github.com/Electron-Cash/keys-n-hashes/blob/master/pubkeys/calinkey.txt

---

Binary builds for macOS coming soon -- Until then you can always build from source!