This release initiates an upgrade of the Taproot Assets transition proof format. Existing users must upgrade to v0.8.5 before block 971,750 (expected date, October 17th, 2026) or their proofs may be rejected by updated Universe servers.
Specifically, upgraded clients will refuse to verify legacy proof formats confirming on or after block 971,750, so attempting to send assets using older tapd versions will create invalid transition proofs from that block onwards.
Additionally, existing asset channels must be upgraded before block 971,750. To upgrade, both peers must upgrade to v0.8.5, and then any kind of state update must occur on the channel (e.g. a payment or keysend) before block 971,750. A safe route, if a peer cannot be trusted to upgrade and update state in time, is to just close existing asset channels with it, and reopen only after upgrading. Note that the close, cooperative or force, must confirm before block 971,750.
For more details see the proof activation guide, especially the 'Migrating a channel' section.
Database Migrations
Note that downgrading from v0.8.5 to previous tapd versions is not presently supported. You should create backups of tapd database state before upgrading to tapd v0.8.5.
Verifying the Release
In order to verify the release, you'll need to have gpg or gpg2 installed on your system. Once you've obtained a copy (and hopefully verified that as well), you'll first need to import the keys that have signed this release if you haven't done so already:
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lightninglabs/taproot-assets/main/scripts/keys/roasbeef.asc | gpg --import
Once you have the required PGP keys, you can verify the release (assuming manifest-roasbeef-v0.8.5.sig and manifest-v0.8.5.txt are in the current directory) with:
gpg --verify manifest-roasbeef-v0.8.5.sig manifest-v0.8.5.txt
You should see the following if the verification was successful:
gpg: Signature made Thu Oct 1 18:52:23 2026 PDT
gpg: using EDDSA key 296212681AADF05656A2CDEE90525F7DEEE0AD86
gpg: Good signature from "Olaoluwa Osuntokun <laolu32@gmail.com>" [ultimate]
That will verify the signature of the manifest file, which ensures integrity and authenticity of the archive you've downloaded locally containing the binaries. Next, depending on your operating system, you should then re-compute the sha256 hash of the archive with shasum -a 256 <filename>, compare it with the corresponding one in the manifest file, and ensure they match exactly.
Verifying the Release Timestamp
In addition to time-stamping the git tag with OpenTimestamps, we also timestamp the manifest file along with its signature. Two files are included in our release artifacts: manifest-roasbeef-v0.8.5.sig.ots and manifest-v0.8.5.txt.ots.
Assuming you have the opentimestamps client installed locally, the timestamps can be verified with the following commands:
ots verify manifest-roasbeef-v0.8.5.sig.ots -f manifest-roasbeef-v0.8.5.sig
ots verify manifest-v0.8.5.txt.ots -f manifest-v0.8.5.txt
Alternatively, the OpenTimestamps website can be used to verify these timestamps if one doesn't have a bitcoind instance accessible locally.
Assuming you are using the OpenTimestamps ots-git-gpg-wrapper you can verify the timestamp of the git tag by verifying the tag as explained in Verifying the Release Binaries.
These timestamps should give users confidence in the integrity of this release even after the key that signed the release expires.
Verifying the Release Binaries
Our release binaries are fully reproducible. Third parties are able to verify that the release binaries were produced properly without having to trust the release manager(s). See our reproducible builds guide for how this can be achieved.
The release binaries are compiled with go1.26.3, which is required by verifiers to arrive at the same ones.
The make release command can be used to ensure one rebuilds with all the same flags used for the release. If one wishes to build for only a single platform, then make release sys=<OS-ARCH> tag=<tag> can be used.
Finally, you can also verify the tag itself with the following command:
$ git verify-tag v0.8.5
gpg: Signature made Thu Oct 1 18:14:35 2026 PDT
gpg: using EDDSA key 296212681AADF05656A2CDEE90525F7DEEE0AD86
gpg: Good signature from "Olaoluwa Osuntokun <laolu32@gmail.com>" [ultimate]
Verifying the Docker Images
To verify the tapd and tapcli binaries inside the docker images against the signed, reproducible release binaries, there is a verification script in the image that can be called (before starting the container for example):
$ docker run --rm --entrypoint="" lightninglabs/taproot-assets:v0.8.5 /verify-install.sh v0.8.5
$ OK=$?
$ if [ "$OK" -ne "0" ]; then echo "Verification failed!"; exit 1; done
$ docker run lightninglabs/taproot-assets [command-line options]Building the Contained Release
Users are able to rebuild the target release themselves without having to fetch any of the dependencies. In order to do so, assuming
that vendor.tar.gz and tapd-source-v0.8.5.tar.gz are in the current directory, follow these steps:
tar -xvzf vendor.tar.gz
tar -xvzf tapd-source-v0.8.5.tar.gz
go install -v -mod=vendor -ldflags "-X github.com/lightninglabs/taproot-assets/build.Commit=v0.8.5" ./cmd/tapd
go install -v -mod=vendor -ldflags "-X github.com/lightninglabs/taproot-assets/build.Commit=v0.8.5" ./cmd/tapcli
The -mod=vendor flag tells the go build command that it doesn't need to fetch the dependencies, and instead, they're all enclosed in the local vendor directory.
Additionally, it's now possible to use the enclosed release.sh script to bundle a release for a specific system like so:
make release sys="linux-arm64 darwin-amd64"
Release Notes
⚡ ⚡ ⚡ See the in-repo release notes for other high-level changes made since v0.8.4. ⚡ ⚡ ⚡