Litecoin Core 0.18.1 enters final testing.

Litecoin Core, Litecoin’s most popular full-node implementation, is nearing its next major release. Adrian Gallagher, lead developer of the Litecoin project, hinted at the next update through a screenshot posted on his Twitter account.

Litecoin Core 0.18.1 comes together nicely!

According to data provided by Blockchair, Core currently accounts for over 90% of the entire network, with the latest build 0.17.1 accounting for around 50%. Additionally, more than half of the network appears to run in the United States, Germany, and France, but this does not account for all available connections or TOR-supported nodes, with these countries being popular exit points.

The ‘Litecoin Project’ aligns its updates closely with the ‘Bitcoin Core Project’ and is usually a few releases behind at a time. Therefore, the next update will consist of 0.18 and 0.18.1 improvements. This release introduces numerous new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements, as well as updated translations.

Among the changes are the depreciation of the typical plethora of new RPCs and many others, along with improvements to block and transaction processing, network code and P2P protocols, GUI, wallets and build systems. More than 100 changes have been made in this major release, and although an exact release date has not yet been provided by the team, it has been a long-anticipated release. Gallagher’s latest update states that ‘almost all work has been completed except for issues with fees.’

The core is the backbone of the network, allowing businesses to retrieve and process data as well as day-to-day operations. Updates like these are critical to the health and evolution of the network, and users who choose to run full nodes help signal their votes on the direction of the project by verifying their own blockchain instance and setting the rules. The latest Core release can be downloaded via Litecoin.com.