Dogecoin Core 1.10 Beta 1

Dogecoin 1.10 is a complete rebuild based on Bitcoin 0.11. This means in terms of the code-base we introduced all the changes between Bitcoin 0.9 and 0.11 into this version of Dogecoin Core.
We therefore suggest to read the release notes of both Bitcoin 0.10 and Bitcoin 0.11

Upgrading

To upgrade from any version below 1.10 you will need to re-index once, as the block database format has changed. If you run the Qt GUI client, it will prompt you to do so on the first start after the update. If you run a dogecoind daemon, you will need to start it with the parameter -reindex once after you updated. This process can take a few hours, depending on the performance of your machine.

Mining

For this beta release, we decided to disable AuxPoW mining, while further testing is completed. The functionality will be re-enabled in a later release candidate. EDIT: This does not mean we turned off AuxPoW. Just that mining is not possible with this version of the client ;) It will work just like before for everyone else, so this is solely of interest for pool admins.

Notable changes

For further explanation of these, see the above mentioned Bitcoin release notes.

Faster synchronization

Dogecoin Core 1.10 introduces headers-first and parallel block synchronization to greatly reduce the initial blockchain synchronization time.

Watch only address support

It is now possible to add public keys to your wallet that will be held in a "watch only" state. This means you will get information about incoming/outgoing transactions and resulting balance changes. Especially useful to keep track of your paper wallets.

Strict signature encoding (BIP66)

One of the reasons why mining is disabled on this release is the introduction of BIP66 which enforces strict rules about how transaction signatures are encoded and therefore will introduce a new block version (3). These rules will only activate once a certain number of blocks are mined with this new version. To not let this happen too early, mining is disabled for now. NOTE: This is not a hard fork, as all existing wallets will accept version 3 blocks, although they'll fail to enforce the new requirements.

Block file pruning

It is possible to run a Dogecoin node without keeping the full blockchain on your disk. This is currently incompatible with having a wallet on that client due to the fact that some actions regarding a wallet require the full block data. The minimum amount of kept blocks has been changed from Bitcoin to reflect our shorter block times.

General comments

Please backup your wallet regularly and especially before performing this upgrade. Do not copy your wallet.dat while Dogecoin Core is open. Instead you should either use the backup feature you find in the "File" menu or shut down Dogecoin Core completely before you make a copy of your wallet.dat.

Download

You can find all downloads here: https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/releases/tag/v1.10-beta-1

Please let us know about any bugs you find. Either here or on GitHub :)
Thanks everyone for their continued support!