Bitcoin Core v29.0rc2 Rolls Out Ephemeral Dust, Faster P2P Connections

Bitcoin news hit the wire on March 28, 2025, as BTC, with a market cap exceeding $1.7 trillion, rolled out a major core update.

Bitcoin news broke on March 28, 2025, as BTC, boasted a market cap over $1.7 trillion and rolled out a major core update.

The Bitcoin development team announced on Bitcoins’ own X, formerly Twitter, on Monday morning. Bitcoin Core v29.0rc2, a release candidate, builds on October 2024’s v28.0.

This patch includes ephemeral dust, faster peer-to-peer connections, and tighter security.

For a network that handles more than 400,000 transactions daily, according to Blockchain.com, these changes keep Bitcoin running at peak efficiency.

According to the announcement, the Bitcoin mempool gets a shake-up in v29.0rc2. The development team introduced ephemeral dust—a policy allowing one dust output in a zero-fee transaction.

Spenders must clear it in the same package, bundling it with other outputs. Miners, who process over 144 blocks daily per Bitcoin Core data, could see smoother low-value transactions.

A safety net kicks in too: Bitcoin Core won’t start if weight units fall below 2,000—about 500 vbytes.

Bitcoin’s P2P system, linking over 40,000 nodes globally as of March 2025, scores efficiency gains.

v29.0rc2 tweaks P2P and network settings, trimming delays for BTC’s 7.5 transactions per second, per Blockchain.com.

New RPCs and REST APIs give developers better access to the chain. Mining also benefits—mempool policy updates ease pressure on a network hashing at over 600 exahashes per second, per BitInfoCharts data from March 2025.

The Bitcoin Core wallet, used by thousands, shifts to CMake from Autotools in v29.0rc2. It requires CMake 3.22 or higher, refining the GUI for users.

A new tool converts UTXO snapshots to a SQLite3 database, a boon with over 100 million unspent outputs on the ledger, per Blockchain. Updated tests and dependencies keep the code solid.

Keeping The Chain Rolling

This isn’t Bitcoin’s first upgrade. On October 5, 2024, Bitcoin news hit the spotlight about a new upgrade with stability focus.

v29.0rc2 builds on that, arriving five months later as a release candidate for testing. The Bitcoin team calls it “major,” and the scope backs that up—over a dozen key changes span the network, wallet, and mining layers.

Bitcoin news like v29.0rc2 shows BTC’s engine isn’t stalling. Dust policies, P2P boosts, and a SQLite3 tool touch every angle of a network with a $1.7 trillion market cap and 600 EH/s hash rate. This upgrade isn’t just maintenance—it’s Bitcoin flexing its staying power.