About 13 hours ago Steemit dev team released a new version of the Steem blockchain, 0.19.1rc1. It's the first release after HardFork 19 and it comes exactly one month after that one.
There are quite a few improvements but most of them are very technical, except, probably, the one related to the bandwidth problem, which put some users in incapacity last weeks. According to the release notes:
There were two big problems with the bandwidth algorithm. The first was an integer overflow that caused max_virtual_bandwidth to be calculated incorrectly. The second was a programmed behavior that caused bandwidth requirements to increase too rapidly for a small increase in traffic. We have implemented a new algorithm for how to calculate global bandwidth requirements that still protects the blockchain under extreme circumstances, but is less aggressive during small deviations from past behavior. Overall, this should improve the user experience when it comes to bandwidth rate limiting.
From a quick look over the witnesses logs, looks like the adoption was almost instant, 21 witnesses (out of about 80 active) are already running the new version.
My node was upgraded with no problems to the new version, which is currently replaying the blockchain. Hopefully, it will finish in less than half an hour, when I'm scheduled for my next block.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
If you're new to Steemit, you may find these articles relevant (that's also part of my witness activity to support new members of the platform):