DigiByte v9.26.0-rc16 Release Notes

WARNING: This is a TESTNET-ONLY release. DO NOT use on mainnet.

Development Branch: https://github.com/DigiByte-Core/digibyte/tree/feature/digidollar-v1

Join the Developer Chat: https://app.gitter.im/#/room/#digidollar:gitter.im

What's New in RC16

RC16 is a critical stability release with 3 critical bug fixes, 2 wallet improvements, and comprehensive BIP9 activation gating since RC15. Upgrade strongly recommended — RC15 has a critical oracle P2P bug that causes cascading peer disconnections.

🔴 Critical: Oracle P2P Rate Limiter Was Banning Peers

This was the root cause of DD transactions not confirming on testnet.

Each oracle broadcasts a signed price message every 15 seconds (once per block). Each message has a unique timestamp → unique hash → passes the P2P duplicate check as "novel." With 8 testnet oracles, that's 1,920 novel messages per peer per hour. On mainnet with 30 oracles, it would be 7,200.

The rate limiter only allowed 50 novel oracle messages per peer per hour. After about 12 minutes, every additional oracle message added +5 Misbehaving points to the peer. Within minutes, peers accumulated 500+ misbehavior points, got disconnected, oracle data was lost, the oracle count dropped below the 5-of-8 consensus threshold, no oracle bundles could be created, and every DigiDollar transaction became unmineable.

Essentially, we were banning our own peers for doing their job correctly — like firing a mail carrier for delivering too much mail.

Fixes:

• Oracle broadcast interval changed from 15s to 60s. Exchange APIs don't update faster than once per minute. 60 seconds still gives 12x redundancy per testnet epoch and 25x per mainnet epoch.
• Rate limit increased from 50 to 3,600 messages per peer per hour (30 oracles × 60/hr × 2x headroom for mainnet).
• Misbehaving() penalty completely REMOVED from the rate limiter. Oracle relay is normal P2P gossip behavior. Excess messages are now silently dropped.

🔴 Critical: Dandelion++ P2P Transaction Relay Was Broken

Two bugs in the Dandelion++ privacy relay caused transactions to get stuck with 0 confirmations:

1. Stem relay spam. Transactions were being re-routed through the Dandelion stem phase on every SendMessages() cycle instead of just once. This wasted bandwidth and confused the relay logic. Fixed by tracking already-routed transactions in a m_dandelion_stem_routed set.

2. New peers never learned about existing transactions. When peers disconnected and new ones connected, the new peers had empty inventory sets. Transactions that were already RelayTransaction()'d before the new peer connected were invisible to them — the wallet wouldn't rebroadcast for 12-36 hours. Fixed by seeding new peers with the full mempool on their first INV cycle.

🔴 Critical: Wallet Was Erasing DD UTXOs Before Confirmation

When you minted, transferred, or redeemed DigiDollars, the wallet immediately erased the DD UTXO from its tracking database — before the transaction confirmed on-chain. If the transaction got delayed (which happened a lot due to the Dandelion and oracle bugs above), your wallet would "forget" about the DD you owned.

Fix: DD UTXOs are now only erased upon block confirmation (1-conf), matching the exact same pattern mainnet DGB uses for IsSpent(). Removed premature erasure from 5 transaction paths: TransferDigiDollar, UpdatePositionStatus, BurnDigiDollars, RedeemDigiDollar, and MarkDDUTXOsSpent.

💡 Wallet: Available vs Pending DD Balance

Previously, your DD balance showed everything lumped together — confirmed and unconfirmed. Now the wallet shows "Available" (confirmed, 1+ confirmations) separately from "Pending" (waiting for confirmation), just like it does for regular DGB. No more confusion about what you can actually spend.

💡 Qt: Oracle Price Drift Detection

If the DGB price changed between when you opened the mint screen and when you clicked "Mint," you could end up locking more (or less) collateral than expected. Now the wallet re-checks the oracle price at the moment you click Mint and warns you if it changed, showing old vs. new collateral amounts. The redeem widget also auto-refreshes the oracle price every 15 seconds. Oracle poll timer reduced from 30s to 12s.

🔧 BIP9 Activation Gating (6 commits)

Multiple fixes to ensure DigiDollar features are properly hidden, disabled, and safe on nodes that haven't activated DD yet. This prevents issues on mainnet where DD activates via miner voting (BIP9):

• SCRIPT_VERIFY_DIGIDOLLAR flag now properly activated after BIP9 deployment
• Oracle P2P handlers gated by activation height (prevents pre-activation peer banning)
• DD RPC commands (mint, transfer, burn, redeem) gated by BIP9 activation
• Pre-activation DD validation removed from CheckTransaction
• DigiDollar tab hidden in Qt when not activated
• nDDActivationHeight aligned with BIP9 min_activation_height (22,014,720)

🔧 Other Fixes

• startoracle RPC crash fix — startoracle was using the wrong internal context (node instead of wallet), which could crash the wallet when called from the Qt console.
• Updated Aussie Epic (Oracle 6) pubkey — Key mismatch preventing oracle recognition.
• Fixed pre-existing test failures and added BIP9 activation boundary tests.

Technical Changes

What is DigiDollar?

DigiDollar is a USD-pegged stablecoin built natively into DigiByte. It uses an over-collateralized model where users lock DGB to mint DUSD at the current oracle price of DGB.

The world's first truly decentralized stablecoin native on a UTXO blockchain, enabling stable value transactions without centralized control.

DGB becomes the strategic reserve asset (21B max, only ~1.94 DGB per person on Earth). Everything happens inside DigiByte Core wallet. You never give up control of your private keys. No centralized company, fund or pool. Pure decentralization.

Learn more: https://digibyte.io/digidollar

Wallet GUI Guide

How to Use DigiDollar in the Wallet

1. Open the DigiDollar Tab — Click "DigiDollar" in the top navigation bar
2. Mint DigiDollars — Lock DGB as collateral to create DUSD. Enter the amount and confirm. Your DGB remains locked for the duration of the lock tier you select.
3. Send DigiDollars — Click "Send DGB" but use a DD address (starts with dgbt1...). Or use the DigiDollar tab's send function.
4. Receive DigiDollars — Click "Receive DGB" to get your DD-capable address, or use the DigiDollar tab.
5. View History — DD Transactions tab shows complete transaction history (auto-refreshes)
6. Redeem DigiDollars — Burn DUSD to unlock your DGB collateral after the lock period expires
7. Coin Control — Use manual DD input selection for advanced redemptions
8. Address Book — Save frequently used DD addresses for quick sending
9. Export History — Export DD transactions to CSV for record keeping

Oracle Operator Setup

Want to run an oracle node? Here's the simple version:

Prerequisites

• DigiByte Core RC16 built from source with curl support (or download the binary)
• An assigned oracle ID (0–7 for testnet, contact the maintainer)

New Oracle Setup (First Time)

# Step 1: Start your node
digibyted -testnet -daemon

# Step 2: Create a wallet (use just the name, NOT a full file path!)
digibyte-cli -testnet createwallet "oracle"

# Step 3: Generate your oracle key (one-time)
digibyte-cli -testnet -rpcwallet=oracle createoraclekey <your_oracle_id>

# Step 4: Start the oracle
digibyte-cli -testnet -rpcwallet=oracle startoracle <your_oracle_id>

Step 2 creates a new descriptor wallet. Use just the name "oracle" — do NOT use a full path like "/home/user/.digibyte/testnet13/wallets/oracle/" or your wallet name will display incorrectly.

Step 3 generates a Schnorr keypair, stores the private key in your wallet, and returns the public key. Send the X-only public key (32-byte hex) to the maintainer for inclusion in chainparams.cpp. You only need to do this once.

Step 4 loads the private key from your wallet and starts broadcasting signed price messages to the network.

Existing Oracle — Upgrading to RC16

If you already have an oracle wallet from a previous RC, your key is still there. You do NOT need to create a new wallet or generate a new key. Just:

# Step 1: Stop old node and replace binaries with RC16

# Step 2: Start your node
digibyted -testnet -daemon

# Step 3: Load your existing wallet
digibyte-cli -testnet loadwallet "oracle"

# Step 4: Start the oracle
digibyte-cli -testnet -rpcwallet=oracle startoracle <your_oracle_id>

⚠️ After every node restart, you must repeat Steps 3 and 4. The wallet is not auto-loaded and the oracle thread does not auto-start. Your key persists in the wallet — you never need to run createoraclekey again.

Qt Wallet Users

If using the Qt wallet instead of digibyted:

1. Start DigiByte Qt with -testnet
2. Go to File → Open Wallet → oracle to load your wallet
3. Go to Help → Debug Window → Console
4. Type: startoracle <your_oracle_id>

Fixing Wallet Name

If your getwalletinfo shows the full path as the wallet name (e.g. "/home/user/.digibyte/testnet13/wallets/oracle/"), fix it:

digibyte-cli -testnet unloadwallet "/home/user/.digibyte/testnet13/wallets/oracle/"
digibyte-cli -testnet loadwallet "oracle"

Verify with getwalletinfo — the walletname field should show just oracle.

For the complete guide, see DIGIDOLLAR_ORACLE_SETUP.md.

Current Oracle Operators (Testnet)

Complete RPC Command Reference

DigiDollar Commands (Wallet)

Oracle Commands

Usage Examples

# Check the consensus price DigiDollar uses
digibyte-cli -testnet getoracleprice

# View all oracle operators network-wide
digibyte-cli -testnet getoracles

# See what each oracle reported (forensics)
digibyte-cli -testnet getalloracleprices

# Check your DD balance
digibyte-cli -testnet -rpcwallet=default getdigidollarbalance

# Mint 10 DUSD
digibyte-cli -testnet -rpcwallet=default mintdigidollar 1000

# Send 5 DUSD to someone
digibyte-cli -testnet -rpcwallet=default senddigidollar dgbt1... 500

Commits Since RC15

Critical Fixes

81d9f69ea2 fix: oracle P2P rate limiter causing cascading peer disconnections
0caa0e84a1 fix: resolve two critical Dandelion++ P2P transaction relay bugs
d591861158 wallet: prevent premature DD UTXO erasure — match mainnet DGB pattern

Wallet & Qt Improvements

6e7fce9099 wallet/qt: separate DigiDollar available and pending balances
12ecfd9a13 qt: detect oracle price drift in mint/redeem widgets before TX submission
209d99b7f7 fix: startoracle RPC uses wallet context, not node context

BIP9 Activation Gating

32b4b9c160 fix: activate SCRIPT_VERIFY_DIGIDOLLAR flag after BIP9 deployment
49ac3375a0 fix: gate oracle P2P handlers by activation height
14374cd2d9 fix: gate mutating DD RPC commands by BIP9 activation
c086fd94e1 consensus: remove pre-activation DD validation from CheckTransaction
5bf1dbf8a8 ui: hide DigiDollar tab when not activated
ec53a4347d consensus: align nDDActivationHeight with BIP9 min_activation_height (22014720)

Other

883be119fa chainparams: update Aussie (oracle ID 6) pubkey for RC16
52544cd173 test: fix pre-existing test failures
c107d61040 test: add activation boundary test for DigiDollar BIP9 deployment
fc2420859d test: add activation boundary test for DigiDollar BIP9 deployment

Upgrade Notes

RC16 uses the same testnet13 network as RC12–RC15 (port 12030). Your existing testnet data and wallets will work — no migration needed.

If you're upgrading from RC15, simply replace the binaries and restart. Upgrade strongly recommended — RC15 has a critical P2P bug that bans peers for relaying oracle data, causing oracle consensus failure.

If Upgrading from RC11 or Earlier:

1. Close your old wallet
2. Delete old testnet data:
   • Windows: Delete %APPDATA%\DigiByte\testnet10\ and testnet11\
   • macOS: Delete ~/Library/Application Support/DigiByte/testnet10/ and testnet11/
   • Linux: Delete ~/.digibyte/testnet10/ and ~/.digibyte/testnet11/
3. Download and install RC16
4. Launch with -testnet flag

Aussie Epic (Oracle 6): Your new key is active in this release. After upgrading, run startoracle 6 to begin reporting prices.

Oracle Operators: After upgrading, your oracle will broadcast prices every 60 seconds instead of 15 seconds. This is intentional — exchange APIs don't update faster than once per minute, and the reduced frequency prevents the P2P rate limiter bug from RC15.

Configuration

Minimum digibyte.conf for DigiDollar Testing:

testnet=1

[test]
digidollar=1
addnode=oracle1.digibyte.io

Optional Settings:

[test]
# Enable transaction index (useful for debugging, not required)
txindex=1

# Enable DigiDollar stats index for network-wide supply tracking
digidollarstatsindex=1

# For mining (SHA256d recommended for fastest CPU mining)
algo=sha256d

Known Issues

• Fixed testnet mining difficulty causes slower-than-normal block times on some algorithms
• startoracle must be re-run after every digibyted restart

Testing

All tests validated:

• ✅ 1,515 / 1,515 C++ unit tests pass (zero failures)
• ✅ 8 / 8 DigiDollar functional tests pass

Network Information

Oracle Operators (Testnet)

Downloads

Quick Start

New to DigiDollar?

1. Download the binary for your platform (see Downloads above)
2. Create your config file (see Configuration section)
3. Launch with -testnet flag: ./digibyte-qt -testnet
4. Wait for the blockchain to sync (should be quick on testnet)
5. Once synced, the DigiDollar tab will appear
6. You need DGB to mint — ask in Gitter and someone can send you testnet DGB

Want to Run an Oracle?

See the Oracle Operator Setup section above, or read DIGIDOLLAR_ORACLE_SETUP.md for the complete guide.

Troubleshooting

"Self-minted DigiDollars not showing"

• If you deleted testnet13 and resynced: This was fixed in RC16. Update to RC16 and resync — your self-minted DDs will now appear correctly.
• If balances appear in DD-Transaction/DD-Vault but not in the main overview: Same issue, fixed in RC16.

"Failed to create or send the transaction" when sending multiple DDs

• This was fixed in RC16. Update and retry. You can now chain unlimited consecutive sends.

"DigiDollar tab not appearing"

• Verify digidollar=1 is under [test] section in config
• Verify testnet=1 is at the top of config (not under any section)
• Restart the wallet after config changes

"Not connecting to network"

• Check your firewall allows port 12030
• Verify addnode=oracle1.digibyte.io is under [test] in config

"Oracle price shows 0 or N/A"

• Wait for sync to complete
• The oracle broadcasts price updates every few minutes
• Check Window > Console: getoracleprice

"Transaction stuck / unconfirmed"

• If you upgraded from RC13: This was a known bug fixed in RC15 where minting DD could cause subsequent DGB sends to get stuck. After upgrading, your wallet will automatically re-lock the correct UTXOs on startup.
• If still stuck, try: abandontransaction <txid> in the console

"No wallet is loaded" when running oracle commands

• Your wallet is not auto-loaded after a node restart. Load it first:

  digibyte-cli -testnet loadwallet "oracle"
  

• For Qt wallet: File → Open Wallet → oracle
• Then add -rpcwallet=oracle to your createoraclekey and startoracle commands

Wallet name shows full file path instead of "oracle"

• This happens if you created your wallet using the full path instead of just the name
• Fix it by unloading with the full path and reloading with just the name:

  digibyte-cli -testnet unloadwallet "/home/user/.digibyte/testnet13/wallets/oracle/"
  digibyte-cli -testnet loadwallet "oracle"
  

• Verify with getwalletinfo — walletname should show just oracle

"Oracle not configured" from startoracle

• Run createoraclekey first to generate and store the key in your wallet
• Make sure you load the correct wallet first: loadwallet "oracle"

"Mining not working"

• Ensure algo=sha256d is in your config under [test]
• SHA256d is recommended for fastest CPU mining

"Old testnet data causing crashes"

• Delete your testnet10 and testnet11 folders completely (see Upgrade Notes above)
• RC16 uses testnet13 blockchain

Feedback & Community

Please report issues and feedback to help us prepare for mainnet launch.

When reporting bugs, start your message with BUG: and include: what happened, steps to reproduce, platform (Windows/Linux/Mac), and any error messages from your debug.log file.

• Developer Chat (Gitter): https://app.gitter.im/#/room/#digidollar:gitter.im
• GitHub Issues: https://github.com/DigiByte-Core/digibyte/issues