In short
- The Bitcoin Development Pack has been updated to version 0.2.0.
- The latest release includes several new features and enhancements such as the “branch and bound” alghorithm.
- Developed as an open source project, the BDK is designed to be “a solid foundation for cross-platform Bitcoin wallets.”
New version of the Bitcoin Development Pack (BDK) released yesterday, bringing with it several new features, bug fixes, and improvements. The BDK is a collection of tools and libraries designed to be a “solid foundation for cross-platform Bitcoin wallets. ”
“The main point of this release is our first well-publicized and well-documented statement [Crates.io] a [BitcoinDevKit.org]. This allows devs who want to use our library to easily include it as a dependency, ”says BDK contributor Steve Myers Decrypt, adding, “BDK’s general point is to make it easier for wallet developers to safely use common and advanced wallet features.”
Starting with version 0.2.0, the project – set up earlier this year by Alekos Filini – has officially changed its name from “Magical Bitcoin” to “BDK.”
The open source effort is currently being developed by various contributors such as Steve Myers, Riccardo Casatta, Daniela Brozzoni, Mark Erhardt, Richard Ulrich, Justin Moon, Will Clark, and pseudonym “eupn.”
One of the major new features in 0.2.0 is the addition of an algorithm called “branch and bind.” This allows developers to reduce the amount of transaction data on the blockchain, reduce fees, and improve privacy by reducing additional outputs.
“’Choosing bound branches and coins’ is more aimed at high volume wallets that spend and receive lots of transactions, it tries to find a combination of transaction inputs so that there is no spending transaction needs to make any change, this makes spending transactions less and more private, ”explains Myers.
Another new feature is the key generation that seeks to streamline the process of creating new seed expressions and private keys.
“Key generation is a more basic feature that allows wallet devs to use BDK to randomly generate BIP32 extended private keys and BIP39 mnemonic seed words that you would need to do if you are not using a hardware wallet in your wallet application , ”Noted Myers.
The update also introduced or enhanced features like wallet descriptor templates and macros, generic key types, and others.