Overview
- The project tagged v32.0rc1 on September 14 and is targeting October 10 for the final release, opening a Sept. 14–Oct. 10 testing window that developers and operators should use now.
- The release focuses on internal changes that speed nodes by fetching transaction inputs in parallel during block validation, which testing showed can cut initial block download time by as much as threefold.
- v32.0 fixes critical security flaws including a command-execution bug in walletnotify on non-Windows systems and a memory-exhaustion bug in the new web/HTTP server.
- Four RPCs will default to PSBT version 2 and the HTTP server now enforces an 8,192-byte header limit, a 16-connection RPC default, and stricter malformed-header handling, all of which can break wallets, hardware signers, proxies, and health checks unless updated.
- A rebuilt transaction index uses less than half the disk space but is unreadable by older releases, so downgrading can force an hours-long rebuild and risk service disruption for exchanges, custodians, and independent node operators.