Parity 1.2.0: "Security"

Blog post

New

• Transaction signing UI.
• IPC/RPC module.
• Optimised mining support.
• Windows build.
• DAO soft-fork support.

Changed

• Fast pruning method is now default for a fresh sync.
• Web UI renamed to Dapps UI.
• JSONRPC and Dapps UI enabled by default.
• CLI options ending -off renamed to GNU-consistent prefix --no-.
• Dynamic gas-pricing (data feed and statistical techniques used to determine optimum gas prices).

Transaction signing UI

This is a new framework for signing transactions. It fulfills three requirements:

• You should never have to type your passwords into a Dapp.
• No Javascript code should ever hold a secret.
• No transaction should ever be signed without the consent of the user.

The feature is enabled through the --signer flag. When enabled, the user must ensure at least one "Signer UI" is set-up for managing transaction confirmation. There are two such UIs available; one through a Google Chrome Extension, separately installable and the second through a special web page hosted locally. Set-up must be done once for each such UI, through copying and pasting a token from the output console of Parity into the UI. Specific instructions are given in the UI.

From this point on, no transaction may ever be signed by Parity except through one of these allowed Signer UIs, and no password should ever be entered anywhere else.

IPC/RPC module and Mist/Geth compatibility

Should be started with --geth to ensure Mist compatibility.

Optimised mining support

Numerous improvements and optimisations have been added to our mining implementation. A large "active queue" ensures that late-included transactions are included in the mined block without sacrificing older results from latent-reported ethminer results.

Windows build

We're happy to announce full Windows support with 1.2!

Soft-fork

This release includes support for the proposed DAO soft-fork. Upon upgrade, all mining nodes can vote for or against the soft fork (this is done through altering the block gas limit; a gas limit of at most 4M results in the soft-fork being triggered).

By default, nodes vote "for" the DAO soft-fork (and try to reduce the gas limit to 3.1M). To vote against the soft-fork (keeping it at 4.7M), run with --dont-help-rescue-dao. Not upgrading is not recommended; if the majority votes with a soft-fork, an upgrade will be necessary to mine on the correct chain.

Parity 1.1.0

• Transaction tracing. Parity now optionally indexes & stores message-call/"internal transaction" information and provides additional RPC for querying.
• Web interface for logs, status & JSON RPC.
• Improved JSON RPC compatibility.
• Reduced memory footprint.
• Optimized EVM interpreter performance.

Parity 1.0.2

Parity 1.0.2 release improves Json RPC compatibility and fixes a number of stability issues.

Parity 1.0.1

Parity 1.0.1 update fixes a number of issues with Json RPC, transaction propagation and syncing.

Parity 1.0

Parity 1.0.0 release adds the following features:

• Standard JsonRPC interface.
• Full Homestead compatibility.
• Transaction management.
• Mining with external miner.
• Account management.
• Geth key chain compatibility.
• Additional command line options.
• State trie pruning.
• Cache and queue footprint.
• Network discovery & NAT traversal.
• Custom chain specification files.

Note that in this release the state database is in archive (full) mode by default. Run with one of the --pruning options to enable pruning.

Parity 1.0.0-rc1

Parity 1.0.0 release candidate.

Parity 0.9.1

• Homestead transition block changed to 1100000

Parity 0.9

beta-0.9

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