Bitcoin Core 32 Testing Puts Fee, Wallet and Node Fixes on October Track

Oct. 10 is the planned stable-release date for Bitcoin Core 32.0 after the software entered final testing with changes to fee estimation, block processing, wallet transaction tools and node security, CoinDesk reported.

Developers tagged the first Bitcoin Core 32.0 release candidate on Sept. 14.

That tag starts the last review cycle before a stable build, meaning most node operators are not yet running the update.

Bitcoin’s consensus rules, which define valid transactions and blocks, remain unchanged.

The most visible user-facing change is a new way to estimate transaction fees.

Bitcoin Core already looks at fees attached to transactions that were included in earlier blocks.

Version 32 adds a view of transactions still waiting for confirmation, then compares the two signals.

When the live queue shows that congestion has eased, the software can recommend a lower fee more quickly instead of staying anchored to expensive blocks from earlier conditions.

Node operators should also see a faster catch-up path when validating blocks.

The release uses several processing threads to pull transaction data from local databases while checks are under way, with eight threads enabled by default.

That change targets the waiting time created when a node has to retrieve stored information from disk before it can finish block validation.

The security fixes sit beside those performance changes.

Developers repaired a non-Windows wallet flaw that had been present since Bitcoin Core 24.0.

An authenticated user who was allowed to create wallets could use a specially crafted wallet name to trigger command execution under certain conditions, but only when the operator had enabled walletnotify, a feature that runs a chosen command after wallet activity.

Version 32 treats wallet names as literal text so that parts of a name cannot be interpreted as commands.

Wallet and signing workflows are changing as well.

Four commands used to create partially signed Bitcoin transactions will default to PSBT version 2, the format commonly passed between wallet software and signing devices before coins move.

The older PSBT output remains available on request.

Services that rely on those Core commands now have a compatibility check to complete before the default changes.

A separate server change was corrected before reaching a stable release.

Bitcoin Core 32 replaces the web server used by applications that communicate with a node.

During an audit using Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 model, the replacement server took in additional client data before finishing work already in progress.

The accumulated data could push memory use upward until a node ran out of memory.

The same weakness extended to the REST interface, which can be used without login credentials.

In testing, 16 unauthenticated REST connections drove one node from 46 MB of memory to about 3 GB in roughly a minute.

A 90-second test used 3.2 GB before the fix and about 3 MB after it.

The release schedule now makes testing the bridge between those fixes and the planned October stable build.