**New features in the release:**
1. A new interface to query TX metadata using GraphQL.
The main issues addressed by the new interface are:
- Use an existing and well-defined query language to let apps fetch data from the weave
- Reduce the number of roundtrips required to get an exploitable dataset to use in an app on the permaweb
- Allow querying through user-defined relationships between transactions
GraphQL requests are processed by the POST /arql endpoint. The ArQL language
is still supported - the requests are dispatched to the corresponding backend
according to the received query.
The new queries are resolved using the same backing database as the ArQL queries,
meaning that the feature only presents negligible performance implications compared
to the previous implementation.
GraphQL queries are validated against the schema defined in priv/schema.graphql.
2. Webhooks.
A node can be configured to post blocks and transactions to the specified HTTP endpoints.
Failed requests are retried.
**Bugfixes and improvements:**
1. Fixes a race condition during block verification that causes valid blocks
to occasionally be rejected (~13% of the time), leading to a lower chance of
forks occurring.
2. The efficiency of block application is improved.
**Upgrade instructions:**
1. Shut down arweave-server. To make sure the shutdown was successful, run `ps aux | grep beam | grep -v grep`. The output should be empty.
2. Run `git fetch --all --tags && git checkout N.1.8.1.0 && git reset --hard N.1.8.1.0`
3. Start arweave-server again with the same arguments as before.
For more details on how to run the node, please see our mining guide - https://docs.arweave.org/info/mining/mining-guide. If you have any issues upgrading or would like to know more about the release, feel free to reach out to us in the #mining channel on Discord Arweave Dev Talk server or email us on team@arweave.org.
