Bitcoin Core builders warned customers on Monday of a pockets migration bug in variations 30.0 and 30.1 that may delete recordsdata and lead to fund loss.
The issue happens beneath particular situations and impacts migrations from previous Bitcoin Core wallets that had been by no means renamed or upgraded.
Lacie Zhang, market analyst at Bitget Pockets, advised Cointelegraph that the bug is triggered when the software program makes an attempt emigrate an unnamed legacy “pockets.dat” file saved in a customized pockets listing, typically outlined utilizing the “-walletdir” setting, whereas pruning is enabled.
In these instances, the migration can seem to finish efficiently, however the cleanup logic mistakenly deletes your entire pockets listing, and if a person doesn’t have an exterior backup, “lack of entry to funds is successfully assured as a result of all native pockets recordsdata are eliminated.”
Shawn Odonaghue, neighborhood lead at layer-3 blockchain Orbs, advised Cointelegraph that the bug primarily impacts “very previous pockets setups,” and that customers with a {hardware} pockets or trendy pockets software program are unlikely to expertise such points.
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Bitcoin Core pulls binaries and prepares repair
Bitcoin Core 30.1 was launched on Jan. 1 and the pockets migration bug was public disclosed on Monday, with builders pulling the 30.0 and 30.1 binaries from the official obtain website.
The mission advised customers to not use the wallet-migration instruments till a hard and fast launch, Bitcoin Core 30.2, is out there, stressing that current customers who usually are not making an attempt migrations can proceed operating their nodes as regular.
Zhang added that technically proficient customers can assess their publicity by checking whether or not they’re operating Bitcoin Core v30.0 or v30.1, figuring out whether or not their pockets is a legacy pockets, inspecting “debug.log” to see whether or not pruning is enabled and whether or not any migration makes an attempt have already occurred, and by reviewing the listing format to substantiate whether or not “-walletdir” factors to a customized or mounted location.
“The danger is highest if all these situations are current and a migration has both been tried or is pending,” she mentioned. “If no migration has occurred but, customers ought to instantly again up your entire knowledge listing to exterior media and keep away from restarting or upgrading till shifting to model 30.2 or later.”
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Bitcoin Core dominates nodes
In line with Bitcoin knowledge tracker Coin Dance, Bitcoin Core presently accounts for about 78% of reachable Bitcoin nodes, whereas different implementations corresponding to Bitcoin Knots make up virtually 22%.
That dominance means even a narrowly scoped pockets bug can matter for the broader ecosystem.
“The most important takeaway is focus danger,” Odonaghue mentioned. “Bitcoin Core has a large share of the ecosystem, there aren’t many really mainstream options… when one implementation turns into the default, any bug or design resolution has outsized influence.”
Zhang added that whereas the bug was not “consensus-critical,” its influence reveals how wallet-layer points can nonetheless scale into ecosystem-wide issues when a single implementation dominates utilization.
