From idea to revolution

Bitcoin Development History

Underline
POST

Early 2007: Satoshi starts working on Bitcoin

Satoshi Nakamoto starts writing code for Bitcoin. This is based on a post to the Cryptography mailing list where Satoshi wrote on Nov 17th, 2008:

»I believe I've worked through all those little details over the last year and a half while coding it.«

Satoshi starts working on Bitcoin
POST

1st November 2008: Bitcoin paper published

Satoshi Nakamoto announces Bitcoin on the Cryptography mailing list:

»I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.«

Satoshi starts working on Bitcoin
OTHER

Between 3rd and 9th January 2009: Genesis Block mined

The Genesis block is mined with a timestamp of Jan 9th.

The coinbase contains the famous words: »The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks«.

Genesis block
RELEASE

9th January 2009: Bitcoin v0.1 is announced

Satoshi Nakamoto writes on the cryptography mailing list:

»Announcing the first release of Bitcoin, a new electronic cash system that uses a peer-to-peer network to prevent double-spending. It's completely decentralized with no server or central authority.«

RELEASE

16th December 2009: Bitcoin v0.2.0 released

Martti Malmi (sirius-m) adds initial support for Linux. Other new features include mining on multiple CPU cores and initial tor proxy support.

RELEASE

6th July 2010: Bitcoin v0.3.0 released

Laszlo Hanyecz (Bitcoin pizza guy) adds support for macOS. Other new features include the JSON-RPC interface and a new daemon mode. Users contribute GUI translations into German, Dutch and Italian.

RELEASE

15th July 2010: Bitcoin v0.3.1 released (bugfix)

Miscellaneous bugs get fixed. Gavin Andresen starts contributing.

RELEASE

17th July 2010: Bitcoin v0.3.2 released

Satoshi adds checkpoints as a security safeguard that lock a block height to a specific hash. He writes:

»I'll probably put a checkpoint in each version from now on. Once the software has settled what the widely accepted block chain is, there's no point in leaving open the unwanted non-zero possibility of revision months later.«

RELEASE

25th July 2010: Bitcoin v0.3.3 released

This release includes the first consensus change.

The Bitcoin software now follows the chain with the most accumulated work. Prior to that it followed the longest chain - the chain with the most blocks.

RELEASE

Throughout the summer of 2010

Various Bitcoin v0.3.xx versions are released.

BUG

15th August 2010: Critical overflow bug fixed

Satoshi pushes out a fix in v0.3.9(ish) and tells users and miners to re-org the block with the overflowed transaction out of history.

Genesis block
POST

22nd August 2010: Alert system introduced

Satoshi starts working on an alert system which is added in v0.3.11. He writes:

»I've been working on writing the alert system. Alerts are broadcast through the network and apply to a range of version numbers. Alert messages are signed with a private key that only I have.«

»Getting surprised by some temporary down time when your node would otherwise be at risk is better than getting surprised by a thief draining all your inventory.«

»Someday when we haven't found any new bugs for a long time and it has been thoroughly security reviewed without finding anything, this can be scaled back. I'm not arguing that this is the permanent way of things forever. It's still beta software.«

POST

12th December 2010: Final post from Satoshi

Final post from Satoshi to bitcointalk.org. He adds some DoS limits and removes the previously introduced alert system safe mode.

»There's more work to do on DoS, but I'm doing a quick build of what I have so far in case it's needed, before venturing into more complex ideas. The build for this is version 0.3.19.«

OTHER

19th December 2010: Development moves to GitHub

Active development and issue tracking of Bitcoin moves to GitHub.

OTHER

23th April 2011: Last contact with Satoshi

Alleged final email from Satoshi to Mike Hearn:

»I've moved on to other things. It's in good hands with Gavin and everyone.«

OTHER

March-June 2011: New contributors join

Several new contributors start working on the project: TheBlueMatt (March 3), sipa (March 12), laanwj (May 15) and gmaxwell (June 18). Their first pull requests are listed below.

Genesis block
OTHER

19th August 2011: First BIP

With 'BIP 1: BIP Purpose and Guidelines' the first Bitcoin Improvement Proposal is created.

RELEASE

23th September 2011: Bitcoin v0.4 released

Version v0.4. is released with the main feature being wallet encryption.

RELEASE

21th November 2011: Bitcoin-QT v0.5. released

Features are a the new qt GUI and a major bug fix for the wallet encryption (CVE-2011-4447).

OTHER

November 2011 - April 2012: Work on P2SH and other proposals

Work on various proposals (OP_EVAL/P2SH/OP_CHV) to allow the receiver of a transaction to specify the script needed to spend it.

P2SH is implemented in Bitcoin-Qt v0.5.4. Both other proposals are discarded.

RELEASE

30th March 2012: Bitcoin-QT v0.6 released

Features include QR codes for addresses, an implementaion of BIP30 (a security fix for an attack involving duplicate coinbase transactions) and fixes for memory related denial-of-service attacks.

RELEASE

17th September 2012: Bitcoin-QT v0.7 released

Includes implemention of BIP 22, BIP 34 and BIP 35 and many changes in the GUI and networking RPC code.

OTHER

27th September 2012: Bitcoin Foundation announced

Gavin Andresen announces the Bitcoin Foundation.

RELEASE

19th February 2013: Bitcoin-QT v0.8 released

This release migrates the blockchain storage from BerkleyDB to LevelDB. Ultraprune is implemented by sipa (Pieter Wuille), separating the UTXO set from the blockchain database.

BUG

11th March 2013: Unexpected hardfork

An unexpected hardfork occurs, splitting v0.8 from pre-v0.8 nodes.

OTHER

12th December 2013: Rebranding to Bitcoin Core

The Bitcoin-Qt software is rebranded to Bitcoin Core.

RELEASE

19th March 2014: Bitcoin Core v0.9 released

New features include OP_RETURN as a way to include data in blockchain while marking the UTXOs as unspendable. Additionally autotools is used as the build system and bitcoin-cli is introduced as an RPC-client.

COMPANY

Sometime in 2014: Chaincode Labs founded

Alex Morcos and Suhas Daftuar found Chaincode Labs in 2014 to create a place for engineers and scientists to support the development of decentralized digital currencies.

COMPANY

23th October 2014: Blockstream founded

Adam Back, Matt Corallo, Greg Maxwell, Pieter Wuille et al. found Blockstream and release their sidechains whitepaper.

RELEASE

16th Febuary 2015: Bitcoin Core v0.10.0 released.

Notable features include headers-first synchronization, the REST interface, and the bitcoin-tx utility to create and manipulate transactions.

OTHER

Febuary 2015: Lightning whitepaper released

Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja release the first draft of the Lightning Network Whitepaper.

OTHER

15th April 2015: MIT DCI founded

The MIT Media Lab launches the Digital Currency Initiative (DCI). DCI is a research community focused on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

RELEASE

12th July 2015: Bitcoin Core v0.11.0 released

The release includes block file pruning as one of its main features.

OTHER

3rd Febrary 2016: BIP 2 created

Luke Dashjr creates BIP2 in which he proposed a more well-defined and clear BIP process. The proposal is adopted by the community.

RELEASE

23th February 2016: Bitcoin Core v0.12.0 released.

Major features are the introduction of libsecp, sendheaders, opt-in RBF (BIP 125) and mempool limiting.

RELEASE

15th April 2016: Bitcoin Core v0.12.1 released

This release includes the BIP 9 versionbits logic and the definition for the OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY soft fork.

RELEASE

23th August 2016: Bitcoin Core v0.13.0 released

Includes preparatory changes for segwit, Compact blocks, mempool fee-based filtering, HD wallet support, and CPFP transaction selection.

RELEASE

27th October 2016: Bitcoin Core v0.13.1 released

This release includes the code for SegWit as a softfork.

OTHER

1st November 2016: Alert System Retirement

The network wide alert system, which represents a large source of centralization in Bitcoin, is being retired.

RELEASE

8th March 2017: Bitcoin Core v0.14 released

This release significantly speeds up the initial block download.

OTHER

24th August 2017: SegWit activates

SegWit activates on Bitcoin mainnet.

RELEASE

14th September 2017: v0.15 released

This release includes a better fee estimates, support for fee bumping in the GUI, multiwallet functionality and the script cache.

RELEASE

11th November 2017: v0.15.1 released

This release focuses on the safety of the P2P network as a precaution against potential future network forks, as well as bringing bug fixes, optimisations and improvements to the 0.15.x series.

RELEASE

26th February 2018: Bitcoin Core v0.16 released

This release mainly adds SegWit support to the Bitcoin Core wallet.

RELEASE

3rd October 2018: Bitcoin Core v0.17.0 released

This release adds features to the wallet. One being support for Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (PSBT).

COMPANY

20th March 2019: Square Crypto announced

Jack Dorsey announces that Square Crypto is hiring 3-4 engineers and one designer to work full-time on open source contributions to the bitcoin ecosystem.

RELEASE

2nd May 2019: Bitcoin Core v0.18.0 released

This release includes a lot of new features and small changes.

POST

6th May 2019: Taproot proposed

Pieter Wuille releases BIPs to implement Schnorr signatures and taproot in Bitcoin, bringing improvements to privacy, efficiency, and flexibility of Bitcoin smart contracts.

RELEASE

9th August 2019: Bitcoin Core v0.18.1 released

This minor release includes new features, various bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as updated translations.

POST

19th August 2019: Miniscript announced

Pieter Wuille announces Miniscript, a language designed to make programming in Bitcoin SCRIPT more approachable.

RELEASE

24th November 2019: Bitcoin Core v0.19.0.1 released

This release includes new features, various bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as updated translations.

RELEASE

9th March 2020: Bitcoin Core v0.19.1 released

This release various bug fixes and performance improvements.

RELEASE

3rd June 2020: Bitcoin Core v0.20.0 released

This release various bug fixes and performance improvements.

RELEASE

1st August 2020: Bitcoin Core v0.20.1 released

A minor release including changes regarding misbehaving peers, walletnotify and PSBTs which now contain the witness and non-witness UTXO.

COMPANY

2020: Development grants for Bitcoin projects and individual contributors.

Companies, including BitMEX, Square Crypto, OKCoin, BTSE, Kraken, the Human Rights Fundation, Paradigm, and Coinbase, give out development grants to Bitcoin projects and individuals.

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