Bitcoin v0.3.24 is now available for download at https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.3.24/

This is another bug fix release. We had hoped to have wallet encryption ready for release, but more urgent fixes for existing clients were needed – most notably block download problems were getting severe. Wallet encryption is ready for testing at https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/352 for the git-savvy, and hopefully will follow shortly in the next release, v0.4.

Notable fixes in v0.3.24, and the main reasons for this release:

F1) Block downloads were failing or taking unreasonable amounts of time to complete, because the increased size of the block chain was bumping up against some earlier buffer-size DoS limits.

F2) Fix crash caused by loss/lack of network connection.

Notable changes in v0.3.24:

C1) DNS seeding enabled by default.

C2) UPNP enabled by default in the GUI client. The percentage of bitcoin clients that accept incoming connections is quite small, and that is a problem. This should help. bitcoind, and unofficial builds, are unchanged (though we encourage use of “-upnp” to help the network!)

C3) Initial unit testing framework. Bitcoin sorely needs automated tests, and this is a beginning. Contributions welcome.

C4) Internal wallet code cleanup. While invisible to an end user, this change provides the basis for v0.4’s wallet encryption.