Hello ๐ folks, Iโm Kevkevin. Iโm an open-source developer and reporter for Insider Edition.
Last week I reviewed several pull requests from the Bitcoin Core repo. This week there were multiple PRโs that dealt with a constraint that keeps showing up in wallet work: Bitcoin Core GUI does not speak RPC.
Descriptor import and addhdkey lived in the RPC layer, which is fine if youโre the bitcoin-cli, and a dead end if youโre the GUI trying to do multisig. This week both of those grew a real wallet interface.
Also: last week branch-off missed the calendar. This week, sedited tagged v32.0rc1. The testing guide is up. I do not see binaries on bitcoincore.org yet, and Thursdayโs meeting was ten minutes of working groups plus a nudge to still review things for v32.
Merged PRโs
Every week, several changes are officially added to Bitcoin Core. This week, multiple changes were merged. Here are some I found interesting this week.
wallet: Add importdescriptors interface by polespinasa
This week, Pol Espinasa had his change merged, which tackled the fact that importing descriptors was RPC-only and the Bitcoin Core GUI does not use that interface, so it could not offer descriptor import. This is what you need for more complex wallet setups like multisig.
The PR moves the core logic out ofProcessDescriptorImportand intoCWallet::ImportDescriptor, then addsinterfaces::Wallet::importDescriptors()so the GUI can call it directly. Results come back aswallet::ImportDescriptorResultwith aFailureReasonenum, and the RPC layer maps those back to JSON-RPC error codes. Pol already has a GUI menu on his fork to try it, and said heโll open that against the GUI repo now that this is in.wallet: Add addHDkey interface by pseudoramdom
Same story, different RPC.addhdkeyexisted. The GUI still could not call it. Ram (pseudoramdom) moved the wallet logic intoCWallet::AddHDKey(), introduced a genericWalletErrorwith a machine-readable code plus a translated message, and addedinterfaces::Wallet::addHDKey()which generates a new HD key and returns the master xpub. The RPC still does argument parsing, and now also exposes the master fingerprint in hex. Pair this withderivehdkeyand the GUI can produce a shareable xpub during multisig setup without going through RPC.
There are always changes being updated and reviewed in real-time. Here are some notable PRโs that are still up and looking for reviews.
wallet: don't double discard output groups with avoidpartialspends by fjahr
fjahr called this out in Thursdayโs meeting as maybe still interesting for v32. Clean merge, not a draft. If you have review time this week, start here.
With `-avoidpartialspends` or `avoid_reuse`, `GroupOutputs` puts every positive-value output into both the mixed and the positive-only map and runs `push_output_groups` on each, so a group rejected by the eligibility filters lands in `discarded_groups` twice. `AutomaticCoinSelection` then subtracts it twice and could fail with an insufficient funds error even when there would be enough confirmed coins to cover the payment.
Not a problem in a default wallet but it can happen with `sendtoaddress` from an `avoid_reuse` wallet, or with `-avoidpartialspends=1`.
IRC meeting notes
Every week on Thursday, there is an IRC meeting. Here are some short notes from that meeting.
๐ณ๐ท๐ฎ๐ต๐ฟ: There are no pre-proposed meeting topics this week. Any last minute ones to add?
๐ณ๐ท๐ฎ๐ต๐ฟ: Ok, let's do the WGs
--- Topic 1 ---
๐ณ๐ท๐ฎ๐ต๐ฟ: #topic QA WG Update (brunoerg)
๐ฏ๐ฟ๐๐ป๐ผ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ด: no update this week, will have a big one next week.
--- Topic 2 ---
๐ณ๐ท๐ฎ๐ต๐ฟ: #topic QML GUI WG Update (johnny9dev)
๐ท๐ผ๐ต๐ป๐ป๐๐ต๐ฑ๐ฒ๐: Opened issue #36289 to track the QML staging branch
๐ท๐ผ๐ต๐ป๐ป๐๐ต๐ฑ๐ฒ๐: Will use this issue to share my plan for merging gui-qml and help with organizing and prioritizing current issues that remain
๐ท๐ผ๐ต๐ป๐ป๐๐ต๐ฑ๐ฒ๐: We got another new contributor to the project this week, Andrea, and she has already fix a high priority issue for us
๐ท๐ผ๐ต๐ป๐ป๐๐ต๐ฑ๐ฒ๐: thats all for this week
--- Topic 3 ---
๐ณ๐ท๐ฎ๐ต๐ฟ: #topic Benchmarking WG Update (l0rinc, andrewtoth)
๐ฎ๐ป๐ฑ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐๐๐ผ๐๐ต_: no update
๐ณ๐ท๐ฎ๐ต๐ฟ: That's it for the WGs afaict, anything else to discuss?
๐ณ๐ท๐ฎ๐ต๐ฟ: Anything of note from release testing?
๐ณ๐ท๐ฎ๐ต๐ฟ: There is still some stuff to review here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/milestone/84
๐ณ๐ท๐ฎ๐ต๐ฟ: And maybe #36284 is interesting to still make into v32Read here for the full meeting
Releases
v32.0rc1was tagged 2026-09-14 by sedited. Signed git tag exists.
Thank you for reading. Be sure to tune in again next week for your updates on Bitcoin Core!
If there are any comments, suggestions, or errors, do not hesitate to reach out or comment