easyNode for BTX changelog

Update now: without this engine your node stops at block 191,713 and cannot continue. BTX shipped an emergency consensus release today after a nine-hour network halt; it draws a line at block 191,714 that older engines cannot cross.

• The bundled engine is now BTX v0.33.3 (the official release commit, built reproducibly for Apple silicon). It crosses the line, follows the recovered chain, and carries every fix from today's incident.
• Heads-up shown once after updating: the network's confirmation records restarted under a new cryptographic context in this release, so the "confirmations served" numbers begin again from zero. Nothing is lost; the chain itself is unaffected.
• Keeper mode works on this engine, as it did on 0.6.8/0.6.9.

The hardening train, hardened: a 10-angle review of 0.6.7/0.6.8's new machinery found 15 real faults; this round fixes them all. Same engine as 0.6.8, this is the app around it, corrected. If you downloaded 0.6.8 today, take this one instead.

• The stall watchdog can now actually fire. It counted an arriving header as "progress", and BTX mints one every ~90 seconds, so on a live network the 15-minute freeze window reset forever and the watchdog could never trigger, precisely while a mirror starved. It now keys on block movement while blocks lag headers. A frozen frontier with zero authority peers (total isolation) also classifies now, instead of being invisible.
• The watchdog arms itself. It used to depend on the UI poll to learn the node is a trusted mirror; with the window closed to the tray, nothing polled and the watchdog silently stood down on exactly the unattended nodes it guards.
• Serving survives your config. The app deleted a hand-added matmulattestationserve=1 from the conf on every start. It now adopts a hand-set flag into Settings instead, and a new "Serve confirmations" switch controls it, independent of Keeper mode (which still implies it): a FULL node can serve its history too, and a full-history node that serves is the most valuable archive the network has.
• The noban whitelist is no longer forever. Archive whitelist lines were append-only, an address that left the census kept ban-immunity and download authority for life. The list now lives in a managed conf block rewritten each start from the shipped pins + a live DNS resolution of the hostname archives; your own whitelist lines are untouched.
• Archive peers are detected by service bit 31, not a name substring; a failed archive redial is logged as failed (and retried in 1 minute instead of silently burning the 10-minute budget); a stopped node no longer shows the previous run's stall verdict; one peer census per refresh now feeds the status card, the watchdog and the service report (the UI poll ran its own full getpeerinfo every 1.5 s on top).
• Keeper (the standalone Mac installer): the watchdog's fail-quiet stop now sticks (a pause marker the run wrapper honors, it used to restart the node within 2 minutes); uninstall refuses to delete the data folder under a still-flushing node; the conf carries BOTH trusted signer keys (one key measurably rejects ~half of all blocks, a btx-core test now cross-checks the installer against the app's constants); a half-downloaded snapshot is checksum-checked instead of trusted; the spin detector no longer resets its counters when a busy node fails to answer RPC; the installer works when invoked by relative path; reinstalls keep your previous conf at btx.conf.prev.
• Site: /virustotal points at the current macOS artifact again (it still pointed at a 0.6.9-era scan).

First start in minutes instead of hours, and your node can now give the network the thing it is shortest of.

• A new node engine (btxd 1932613f, the newest sealed state of the 0.33.3 branch, source-built for Apple silicon). It carries a week of upstream stability fixes, and one of ours: we found and fixed the reason first start took hours. The headers phase that used to run all evening ("headers climbing then dropping back", 0.6.6) now completes in about a minute, measured at roughly 100× on the same machine.
• Keeper mode is live on this engine. The switch in Settings now actually switches: a small pruned node (~10 GB instead of ~105 GB) that serves signed block confirmations, verified end to end on real hardware before shipping, including serving records for blocks it never held.
• The engine also makes serving possible at all (older engines advertised and answered nothing) and makes pruned nodes safe across unclean shutdowns, the two fixes the Keeper switch was gated on.
• Mac only in this release. Windows and Linux stay on their last build and get the same engine in the next train, their updater feeds are untouched, so nothing breaks; they simply wait.

Your node now knows why a stuck chain is stuck, fixes the one cause that is cheap to fix, and tells you the truth about the rest.

• The app ships the archive peer list and the permission lines a trusted mirror cannot sync without, asserted on every start. This is the single most likely cause of a silent post-upgrade stall, removed.
• A stall now gets a NAME: the app reads the node's own signals and says whether a frozen height means missing blocks, missing signed confirmations, or no peer allowed to hand them over, and for that last one it re-dials the known archive peers itself (never a restart).
• The Mirror card warns BEFORE the height freezes when no connected peer is allowed to serve confirmations, and the "Helping the network" card now credits confirmations you served, the scarcest thing a node can give.
• New opt-ins (both off by default): serve historical confirmations to the network; write a local service-report.json a future dashboard can read. Nothing phones home.
• A footnote that changed everything upstream: the hours-long first-start header sync ("headers climbing then dropping back is normal", 0.6.6, below) turned out to be a measurable node bug, found and fixed on this project's own hardware at ~100×. It ships when the bundled node advances past 0ece8ef4+fix; until then the 8-hour warmup patience stays.
• New alongside the app: keeper/, a one-command installer that turns any Apple-silicon Mac into a small pruned node that serves signed confirmations. Recognition-only, no keys, one-command uninstall.

Setting up works properly again, and Windows updates now arrive on their own.

Linux catches up with everything Mac and Windows got, and now tells you the truth about block 185,000. This release brings 0.6.1 through 0.6.4 to Linux in one go, and adds a readout that explains something we would rather you heard from us than worked out on your own.

Read this part before you update. BTX changed how blocks are proven at height 185,000. Checking those new proofs needs specific hardware: an Apple Silicon Mac, or one of the very newest graphics cards. That is the node software's own rule, not ours. Most Linux machines are outside it, including every AMD card and every NVIDIA card older than the current generation.

If yours is one of them, your node will stop at block 185,000 and this update does not change that. We ran this exact build on exactly such a machine before shipping and watched it happen: it reached block 184,999, asked for 185,000 over and over, and stayed there. We would rather say so plainly than sell you an update that promises to fix it.

What this version does change is the silence around it. Your node now knows where the real end of the chain is, rather than believing 184,999 is the end of the world, and a Block checking line on the status screen says which mode your machine is in. A node that cannot go further tells you so instead of looking perfectly healthy and going nowhere.

If your machine does have qualifying hardware, the node follows the chain past 185,000 normally.

We are not leaving it there. Following the chain on ordinary hardware needs a different mode, which the BTX team is still building out. When there is a way to do it that is safe to leave running unattended, it ships.

What actually arrives for everyone in this release, carried over from the Mac and Windows versions:

• The node recovers on its own instead of quietly giving up on downloading some blocks and needing a restart to unstick.
• Updating the app hands over to the new node cleanly. The previous node is asked to stop and given time to finish writing to disk before the new one starts, with a retry if it is still busy, so an update never leaves you with no node running.
• Quitting lets your node finish shutting down rather than cutting it off after ten seconds, so it starts fast next time instead of rebuilding.
• The Block checking readout, described above.

Setting up is fast again. Finding the start of the chain can take the node the better part of an hour, during which it looks like nothing is happening. The app used to conclude something had gone wrong, give up on the verified snapshot it had just downloaded, and start building the chain from the very beginning instead. That is the difference between being ready after a coffee and not being ready by tomorrow. It now waits properly, and uses the snapshot the moment the node is ready for it.

First sync still takes a while after that. The snapshot puts you most of the way there and the rest fills in behind it. A block height that creeps up slowly is it working, not it stuck.

Other rough edges we would rather name here than leave you to find:

• A node can stop advancing after several hours, even with peers connected and ahead of it. Restarting it gets it moving again. There is a fix for this in the BTX team's newer work, but taking it today would stop the node starting at all on machines without qualifying hardware, so we have left it.
• The background fill of older blocks can stall. If it does, your node keeps following the chain normally but never becomes a complete archive, so older blocks stay missing. This matters only if you point a wallet or block explorer at your own node and ask it about history.

Also in this release:

• Nothing to re-download. Updating swaps the node program and leaves your copy of the chain where it is.
• The bundled node is the same one Mac and Windows 0.6.4 carry, built from the BTX team's in-progress 0.33.3 branch (commit 1e51f0d1), because the network needed these fixes before a tagged release existed. We move to the official tag the moment it lands. It reports itself as v0.33.2 because that branch has not bumped its own version string yet; that is expected.

Windows

Windows catches up, and your node stops being stuck at block 184,999. This is the first Windows update since the proof-of-work change at block 185,000, and it is the one that gets a Windows node moving again. The node inside the app could score the continuing chain as "not trustworthy yet" and simply never ask other computers for those blocks, so it sat there looking perfectly healthy, peers connected, height frozen. If your Windows node has been showing 184,999 for days, this is why, and this update is the fix.

Coming from 0.6.0, you also get everything Mac users received in between:

• Your node tells you how it checks blocks. A "Block checking" line on the status screen says whether this computer checks every block itself or leans on a simpler path. On Windows it will normally say the processor is doing the work, which keeps your node running and useful, though it can fall behind the newest blocks. That is expected, not a fault.
• The node recovers on its own instead of quietly giving up on downloading some blocks and needing a restart to unstick.
• Updating the app hands over to the new node cleanly. The previous node is asked to stop and given time to finish writing to disk before the new one starts, with a retry if it is still busy, so an update never leaves you with no node running.
• Quitting lets your node finish shutting down rather than cutting it off after ten seconds, so it starts fast the next time instead of rebuilding.

Nothing to re-download. Your copy of the chain stays exactly where it is.

Windows installers are unsigned, so Windows may show a SmartScreen warning on first run. That is unchanged from previous versions.

Updating the app no longer risks leaving your node stopped. When an app update also carries a new bundled node (like 0.6.2 did), the freshly updated app could try to launch the new node while the previous one was still holding the data folder. The new node would exit immediately ("cannot obtain a lock"), the old one wound down anyway, and the app sat on an error with no node running until you restarted it by hand. We hit this ourselves on our own Mac while watching the 0.6.2 rollout.

The app now does the handover properly:

• It stops the previous node first and waits for it to finish, including the disk flush at the end of a node shutdown, which can take a minute or two, and only then starts the new one. While that happens you see "Waiting for the previous node to finish shutting down…" instead of a silent hang.
• It retries. If the launch still loses the race, the app notices within seconds and tries again instead of giving up with nothing running.
• It never touches a node another app is managing. If the easyBTX miner (or a second copy of this app) is running the node on this machine, the update leaves that node alone and applies on its next natural restart.
• If your node was already running the 0.6.2 binaries, nothing is restarted, the app simply attaches like before.

The bundled node itself is unchanged from 0.6.2 (the BTX team's 0.33.3 work at commit 1e51f0d1), so there is nothing to re-download and your copy of the chain stays exactly where it is.

The network moved past block 185,000, this update makes sure your node moves with it. Most nodes on the old code sat at height 184,999 looking synced while the chain carried on without them: the node scored the continuing chain's headers as "not yet trustworthy" and never asked peers for those blocks. The bundled node advances to the BTX team's newest 0.33.3 work (commit 1e51f0d1), which fixes that ranking, downloads blocks in the right order from peers that can actually serve them, and repairs a crash in the snapshot loader.

Verified on our own Mac before shipping: headers jumped from 184,999 to the live network tip within minutes of the swap, a fresh node using the built-in snapshot start caught up through the fork at several hundred blocks per minute, and the first proof-of-work blocks of the new era validated on the GPU with the canonical chain confirmed at the fork's two checkpoint heights. One honest note: blocks after 185,000 carry the new heavier proofs, so the final stretch of catch-up validates at whatever pace your Mac's GPU can check them, expect that part to take a while on older machines.

• Nothing to re-download. Updating swaps roughly 25 MB of node program and leaves your copy of the chain exactly where it is.
• Like 0.6.1, the bundled node is built from the BTX team's in-progress 0.33.3 branch, because the network needs these fixes before a tagged release exists. We re-pin to the official tag the moment it lands.

Nodes were quietly wedging, and this stops it. The node inside the app had a bug where it could permanently give up on downloading some blocks: an internal marker was set while a block was being checked and never cleared if that check was abandoned. The node then sat there looking healthy, peers connected, height frozen, and the only cure was quitting and starting it again. If you restarted your node to "unstick" it in the last day, this was why.

The bundled node moves to v0.33.3, which expires those stale markers so the node recovers on its own, and fixes several related stalls: it no longer schedules work past the first gap, no longer busy-loops while deferring blocks during catch-up, and no longer deadlocks from a lock-order problem under load.

• Nodes without a supported graphics chip are no longer boxed in. The consensus tier used to be able to deadlock a processor-only node outright. It is now a preference rather than a hard gate, so those nodes keep moving.
• Nothing to re-download. Updating swaps roughly 25 MB of node program and leaves your copy of the chain exactly where it is.

⚠️ About this version: it is built from the BTX team's in-progress 0.33.3 work rather than a finished release, because the network needed the stall fix now. It has been verified on Apple Silicon here: the node passes BTX's own production self-check and reports itself as a full validator. We will move to the finished release as soon as it is published.

BTX changed how blocks are proven at block 185,000, and this update carries your node across. The node inside the app moves from BTX v0.33.1 to v0.33.2. A v0.33.1 node cannot check the new blocks at all: it does not go wrong loudly, it simply stops following the chain while still looking healthy. If your node is sitting at block 184,999, this is why, and this update is the fix. Nothing you have already downloaded is lost.

• Your node now tells you how it checks blocks. A new "Block checking" line on the status screen says whether this machine checks every block itself, or checks them on the processor and may drift behind the newest ones. It reads the answer from the node itself rather than guessing from your hardware.
• And it explains the busy first few minutes. To find out what your machine can do, your node runs the new proof of work once at startup. That takes a couple of minutes and works the graphics chip hard, so the fans may spin up. The status now says "Checking…" while it happens, instead of leaving you to wonder. It runs once per start.
• A node that stops following the chain no longer says LIVE. If your machine cannot check the new proof of work, the status turns amber and says so, instead of showing a confident green while nothing moves.
• Machines without a supported graphics chip keep running. On Windows and Linux the node is told to check blocks on the processor. It stays useful and keeps serving the network, though it can fall behind the newest blocks. On Apple Silicon the graphics chip does the work and the node checks everything itself.
• Faster first-time setup. The bundled starting snapshot moves from block 155,700 to 179,000, so a fresh install has 23,300 fewer blocks to catch up on. (Existing installs keep the chain they already have.)
• Explorer mode stops switching itself off. Updating the node used to quietly clear the Explorer setting while the app still showed it as on, so transaction lookups answered "not found" for transactions that existed.
• Automatic updates now work on Windows and Linux. Both were pointed at an update file that was never published, so they could never update themselves. They now use the same working feed as the Mac. This one release still has to be installed by hand on Windows and Linux; after it, they keep themselves current like the Mac does.

Nothing hides below the window edge anymore, especially on Windows. The setup progress and any setup error used to render below the visible area of the fixed-size window, with no way to scroll: on Windows, where text runs taller, clicking "Set up my node" could look completely frozen while the download ran (or failed) out of sight. The screen now scrolls, the progress card slides into view on click, and an error jumps into view the moment it happens.

• Updates are loud now. When a new version is found, an accent-framed banner appears under the header, "Update available: v0.5.x, downloading…", instead of a silent swap. Same automatic install, now visible.
• Check for updates yourself. Settings → Updates → "Check now". It answers either way: update found, you're on the latest, or couldn't reach the feed.
• A setup log. First-run setup now writes every step and any error to setup.log in the data folder, so "it seems stuck" is diagnosable instead of a mystery.

A first-run screen that clearly does something. Pressing "Set up my node" used to feel like nothing happened. Now the button turns into a live "Setting up your node…" with a spinner and a plain-language readout of each step ("Downloading the snapshot… 34%", "Starting your node…"), a moving progress bar that never sits dead at zero, and a clear note: this takes a few minutes, you can leave and come back, it's ready when the screen turns green. The welcome copy is trimmed down too, so the one thing to do is obvious. (If you're already set up, this screen never shows.)

The app updates itself now. BTX Node checks for a new version on launch and every few hours after, and when one is out it downloads it, verifies the signature, and swaps itself in on the next relaunch, no more hunting the website for a fresh build. It's the same signed-update mechanism the easyBTX miner uses. This is the first version that carries it, so this one you install by hand; from here on it keeps itself current. (Everything in 0.5.0 below is included.)

Wallet polish, coins that go ding, and a red X that finally behaves.

• Live updates. The open wallet now re-asks your node every 20 seconds, so a confirmation ticks up while you watch instead of only when you reopen the panel. That's the fix for "it arrived but still says unconfirmed."
• Transaction sounds. A short 16-bit coin when a payment lands, a brighter chime when it gets its first confirmation, and a little rising blip when you send. Kept low (about a third volume) and decent, never annoying. There's a Sound toggle right in the wallet if you'd rather have quiet, and it's built from a tone generator, so nothing extra is bundled and nothing leaves your box.
• Buttons where you'd reach for them. The sent-transaction screen and your own address now have clear Open in explorer and Copy buttons, and every activity row shows a ↗ so it's obvious a click opens it on btxscan.io.
• Closing a wallet asks first. "Close this wallet" now confirms before it stops watching, and reminds you the .btxwallet file stays saved, no more one-click surprise. (Your keys were never deleted; now it's clear.)
• The red X, your way. Closing the window used to silently keep the node running in the menu bar, which is why quitting felt like it needed Force Quit. Now the X asks, keep it running in the menu bar, or quit, and can remember your choice (also changeable in Settings). Either way, quitting stops the node without freezing: it shows a quick "stopping safely" and exits on its own.
• Clearer at a glance. A running node now says LIVE instead of "Ready" (ready read like it was still waiting on something). In the wallet, money coming in is green and money going out is red. And the ✕ that closes any panel is now red, so it's obvious how to get out.

The wallet grew up. It was a window you could look through; now it's a wallet you can use.

• Send. Pay any BTX address straight from your node. A review step shows the amount and the destination before anything leaves, and Max sends the whole spendable balance (the network fee comes out of the amount, so it actually goes through). Your node checks the address is real before it signs anything.
• Receive. A fresh address whenever you want one, with a QR code to scan and a one-click copy. Every address you've ever been given keeps working. Handing out a new one per payment is what stops your payments from being tied together in public.
• Activity. Fifty transactions instead of eight, and every row is now clickable: it opens that transaction on the public explorer (btxscan.io) if you want a second pair of eyes. Your own address opens there too.
• Still your node's answer. Balances and history come from the full copy of the chain on this computer, same as before. The explorer link is the one thing that reaches out, it never happens on its own, and it sends nothing but the id you clicked.

Under the hood: sending was never a new capability. The wallet file the node restores carries the post-quantum master seed, so the node has held full spending keys since the wallet feature shipped, v0.3.x simply had no button. Nothing about your keys changed here.

One app, three platforms. BTX Node now runs on Windows and Linux too.

• Windows (x64). An installer with the full one-click experience: verified snapshot fast-start, "Ask your node", the optional wallet, and automatic disk housekeeping. The bundled BTX node binaries are built from the official v0.33.1 source and boot-tested on real Windows, including mining a regtest block, before they are allowed into the installer. Node data lives under %APPDATA%\easyBTX.
• Linux (x86_64). AppImage and deb builds bundling the official static v0.33.1 binaries. Tested on a clean Ubuntu machine.
• Honest numbers everywhere. The "what it costs" panel now measures memory on every platform; CPU shows a dash where the OS has no cheap per-process number (Windows).
• Small copy pass: the app says "this computer" instead of "this Mac" where it matters, because it might be neither.

• The header links to network-wide stats (btxprice.com/stats) next to your node's own numbers.

• Create a wallet. The optional wallet view can now create a fresh post-quantum BTX wallet inside your node and save its .btxwallet file, the same format the official BTX browser wallet uses. Still off by default.

• Honest disk numbers: the chain measures about 105 GB today and grows roughly 1 GB a day; the app now says so up front and checks free space before setup.
• Remove node data in Settings: gracefully stops the node, removes the chain data, and returns the app to the setup screen. Wallets are never touched.

• Ask your node. Tap the ? and your node answers the questions people usually ask an explorer website: chain progress, supply so far, the next halving, fees, mining difficulty, any block. Every answer names its source, and the green dot means it came from your own verified copy of the chain.
• Explorer mode (optional): builds a transaction index in the background so you can look up old transactions.
• Optional wallet view (off by default): import your .btxwallet file and read balances from your own node instead of a public explorer.
• A calm Warming phase while the node checks its data after a restart, and automatic disk housekeeping on every start.
• BTX Node look: the green status core, dark calm theme, and the BTX Node wordmark.

• First release: a one-click BTX full node for Apple Silicon Macs. Verified snapshot fast-start, live status (block height, peers, uptime, disk), menu bar tray, launch at login, keep awake, graceful shutdowns.