Aug 8, 2019
ElectrumSV 1.2.4
This release primarily fixes coin-splitting to work with the changes to the faucet that it relies on.
Useful links:
- Find our website here, where you can get the new version.
- Find our issue tracker here, where you can work with us to fix any problems you might have.
- Discuss problems and ideas with us in the #electrumsv channels in selected slacks like Unwriter’s atlantistic and Metanet ICU.
What has changed in this release?
If you don’t want to know the details, just read the titles.
Coin-splitting works again
Affects everyone. The coin-splitting functionality stopped working because the faucet it relies on, stopped working.
When someone wants to split coins in ElectrumSV, they are making sure that when they send the Bitcoin SV (BSV), they do not also send the Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCH) or Bitcoin Core (BTC) that may be in the same addresses. This is done by moving the coins in the BSV addresses in a way that only works on the BSV blockchain, and leaves any BCH or BTC in those addresses where they are. Once this is done, those BSV coins can then be moved or spent in any way the user wishes, and any BCH or BTC is unaffected.
So why did it stop working? Because some loser decided to steal all the BSV in the faucet we rely on, either they hate BSV and were doing it as a childish act out, or they’re narcissistic and didn’t care about other people and wanted the small amount that was there for themselves.
The faucet has been changed to require a captcha, and the way the loser was stealing the funds will no longer work. Also, because we now require the person who is splitting to use the web site directly, this gives the faucet even more leeway to be updated if the loser decides to attack the faucet again.
So let’s summarise the revised splitting process.. First the user goes to the coin-splitting tab in ElectrumSV.
They click on the “Split” button to begin the process, and ElectrumSV waits for the user to receive some BSV dust (a tiny token amount not worth any real value) — which is how it will ensure it can move your coins to BSV-only addresses.
And your browser pops to the front showing the faucet page (we know the right faucets for not only the real BSV blockchain, but also the testnet and scaling testnet BSV blockchains if you are a developer and your wallet is on those). We also populate the address in your wallet that it is watching for the BSV the faucet will send to it, to arrive in.
You can then return to ElectrumSV and wait for the faucet dust to arrive, and when it does, ElectrumSV will detect it and construct a transaction that combines that dust with the usable coins in your wallet. If your wallet is password protected, it will need your password in order to sign that transaction on your behalf. Having done so, it will ask you to confirm you want to send the transaction — this gives you a chance to see how much you are sending and what fee you are paying.
The splitting transaction will then be sent to the network, completing the process. We show the transaction id, to be consistent with how transactions are sent elsewhere.
And both the transaction receiving the dust from the faucet, and the transaction that combines the accessible coins in the wallet, can be seen in the wallet.
Remember, you only split the coins that were accessible in your wallet. Any new coins that you receive in the wallet that are in the same addresses as BTC or BCH coins are not split — and there’s no obvious way to tell this. It’s not rocket science, if you know you receive coins that have not been split and pretty much everyone does know if this is the case, then make sure you split those coins. You are responsible for understanding what you are doing well enough, and for any coins you lose by choosing not to learn what is going on.
Blockchair block explorer is now available for use again
Affects the limited set of people who use the menu options to view a transaction or address on a block explorer, and who prefer Blockchair over one of our other options.
When Bitcoin SV continued on from Bitcoin Cash, we were left with the some of overly complicated and strange changes — one of which was a way of displaying addresses called “cash addresses”. This misguided change replaced the real addresses that Bitcoin already had.
Every relevant business and application dropped support for cash addresses. But some businesses that were perhaps anti-Bitcoin SV just continued to show cash addresses to our users, because they didn’t care about providing a reliable level of support to those users.
One of these businesses that continued to show cash addresses, was Blockchair.
Because of this, we had to remove Blockchair from the list of block explorers we offer, in order to prevent problems for our users. Fortunately, Blockchair have come around and have fixed their addresses for Bitcoin SV to be real addresses and they no longer show cash addresses. So we’ve added them back in this release. Thank you Blockchair!
Commits: #1
New policy that block explorers must use real addresses
Affects the limited set of people who use the menu options to view a transaction or address on a block explorer.
When it was pointed out that Blockchair now used real addresses, it was also pointed out that we should have a formal policy relating to this — and that there were two other block explorers that used cash addresses that should have also been removed when Blockchair was originally removed.
bchsvexplorer.com was one of these. But they must have heard that we were removing block explorers who showed cash addresses, and have addressed it and now show real addresses. Thank you bchsvexplorer.com!
bsv.btc.com is the other one, and still shows cash addresses. When they rectify this and show real addresses, we can re-add them in a future ElectrumSV release.
All the block explorer related changes in this release are thanks to Github user lewis9999, who brought them up and even went to bchsvexplorer.com and recommended they change to real addresses.
What are these things you talk about?
Some of the things referred to above, may not be things you use. Here we will show you how they are used in ElectrumSV.
Block explorers
Block explorers are external web sites that we use to allow people to verify that their addresses and transactions contain what we say they contain.
In your wallet history, you can view the context menu for a transaction, and when you select the “View on block explorer“ option, it will open that transaction in a block explorer in your web browser.
If you have the addresses tab enabled, which you can do through the “View” menu, you can view the context menu for an address, and when you select “View on block explorer”, it will open that address in a block explorer in your web browser.
So what block explorer does it use? Well, if you’ve never opened the “Preferences” which you can do from the toolbar button or the “Tools” window, it will pick of of the ones we support at random. But if you do open the “Preferences” then you can pick a preferred explorer to always use. Note that the following screenshot is on the scaling testnet, so it has different options from the ones mentioned above.
And that’s all you need to know, besides getting familiar with the feature and learning how it can be useful to you.
What changed before this release?
You can find even more guides to changes in earlier versions from within the following guides:
