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About 11 days ago, I updated to v0.20.1 of Bitcoin Core from their "official" website (https://bitcoin.org/en/download).

Ever since, it's been syncing every day but just keeps lagging behind. Now it had reached 11 days, so I went to the same website to check if there's a new version which fixes the bug (which I assume is present in this version).

I was shocked to see not a v0.20.2, but rather: bitcoin-0.20.0-win64-setup.exe

It's gone back to v0.20.0... I felt a cold sensation down my spine, fanatically checking the GitHub issues for any clue that v0.20.1 was a "dud" or something, but found not one mention of it.

Now I'm starting to wonder if what I got was actually malware or something. Why would they just revert to an old version and pretend as if the v0.20.1 one never happened? It makes me feel uneasy to say the least. I installed the old version now, but so far, it still says the same thing:

Processing blocks on disk... 11 days behind...

This kind of thing is what makes me very worried about Bitcoin's future. With all the scams and scumbags everywhere, constantly trying to steal Bitcoins and/or give Bitcoin a bad name, the last thing we need is for the "official" project/client to be this flimsy and unstable. If I, a Bitcoin fanatic, gets this worried, what would an old granny be? She probably would never recover from this state, perpetually unable to make Bitcoin payments because Bitcoin Core has "locked" somehow.

I frankly don't know what to do now other than wait and hope for it to finish doing whatever it's doing. It seems locked/frozen again. I don't dare to click anything inside its GUI window because that tends to make it crash.

Update: At least it now, with the old version, slowly climbs down in the number of days left.

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  • No ones grandma is going to run a full client. After all it’s just a reference client anyway not the holy grail. Old versions in software development are often rolled back and its better to just remove a potentially bad version then leave it around for others to download.
    – michael.schuett
    Commented Sep 14, 2020 at 7:25
  • @mschuett "Just a reference client"? I certainly have never found any other one which I would ever trust to install on my machine at all, let alone use to power any kind of automated payment system. In fact, even Bitcoin Core has serious issues in regards to that, but that's off-topic here.
    – Daltin S.
    Commented Sep 14, 2020 at 7:33
  • @DaltinS. Your grandma doesn't need to run a full Bitcoin node. A majority of users do not need to run a full Bitcoin node. Bitcoin Core isn't the "official" bitcoin wallet. Bitcoin is decentralized software with no singular "official" source. It was the first of its kind, thus dubbed a "reference client" upon which other developers can use as a loose set of guidelines to follow when making other clients. A good example of a popular Bitcoin client is Bitcoin Knots. If all you need to do on Bitcoin is make transactions and not worry about its inner workings, use a "wallet" program, not a node.
    – Septem151
    Commented Sep 14, 2020 at 9:45
  • Hi, I just checked and I found the 0.20.1 version that was publised on the Github repo on Aug 2, so I think you're confused. Besides I doubt that your issue has anything to do with version, did you check the debug.log file that is in the bitcoin data directory? You might find what's wrong there. Be more specific, it's actually unclear what you're asking here.
    – Sosthène
    Commented Sep 16, 2020 at 0:02

2 Answers 2

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Are you sure you actually installed 0.20.1 before? It seems that the pull request to add the 0.20.1 release to bitcoin.org never got merged: https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/Bitcoin.org/pull/3435

If you look on the project's own site, https://bitcoincore.org, you'll see that 0.20.1 is available just fine.

I would be very surprised if anything at all changed regarding block chain synchronization in 0.20.1 vs 0.20.0. I suspect what happened is that your node initially just picked bad peers to synchronize from, but after (re)installing 0.20.0, that went away on its own.

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You do not always need to run the latest version of Bitcoin Core (or any software for that matter). The difference between v0.20.0 and v0.20.1 is a "minor" release, which only introduces typically very small changes. According to the Bitcoin Core's GitHub Releases page, the latest minor release is v0.20.1 (no mention of v0.20.2, and the GitHub repo is pretty much the "home" of Bitcoin Core, not the Bitcoin.org website)

Additionally, https://bitcoin.org is a beginner-friendly resource for those new to Bitcoin, which does have a download section for Bitcoin Core, but Bitcoin Core itself should be downloaded from https://bitcoincore.org (which is the link that is referenced on the GitHub page) since the latter website includes minor releases whereas the beginner-friendly site only lists major releases.

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  • 2
    This is wrong. Minor releases are for bug fixes, and can contain security fixes; installing those may well be more important than upgrading to new major versions (which bring new features that not everyone may need). bitcoin.org has historically listed all Bitcoin Core releases, including minor ones - but it seems something just went wrong with 0.20.1: github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/Bitcoin.org/pull/3435
    – Pieter Wuille
    Commented Sep 14, 2020 at 16:41
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    It's fixed now, FWIW. Bitcoin Core 0.20.1 is on bitcoin.org.
    – Pieter Wuille
    Commented Sep 15, 2020 at 20:02

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