Liana v2.0: Simplified Installation, Reuse xPub in Descriptor & More

• "Liana v2.0 is finally out! It is a major release, but you won't see much of a difference if you are already using Liana. For new users though, it makes Liana a lot more friendly: no command line needed to launch Bitcoin Core anymore!"
• "Another big improvement is that we now have a .deb and pkgbuild for Debian and Arch-based linux distributions now. Even simpler than before. If like @KLoaec you "use Arch btw", get Liana-bin from the AUR! You can also get these on our website."
• "On the technical side, we are now allowing the users to reuse an xPub in their descriptor, no need to send multiple ones when you participate in a multi-user/multisig set up. This was requested multiple times, and wasn't obvious due to Miniscript malleability constrains."
• "We also fixed a lot of small things, improved the RPC, clarified some error messages, etc."
• "Shoutout to Pythcoiner for steadily helping by testing, guiding new
  users and even contributing a guide to recover from a Liana wallet
  backup with nothing but Bitcoin Core 25.0!"

What's changed

Breaking changes

• Descriptors created with Liana v2 may not be backward compatible with Liana v1.

Features

• We made it possible to re-use an xpub within a descriptor, so long as it uses a different derivation path.
• We added new RPC commands allowing for updating and querying labels of txids, addresses and outpoints.
• We've made our RPC connection to bitcoind more robust.
• We now distribute packages for Debian-based and Arch-based Linux distributions.
• A guide on how to recover a Liana wallet backup with Bitcoin Core was added.
• An example config file for running lianad was added.
• We've worked around the use of prefixed-paths on Windows thereby allowing us to bring back the watchonly wallet at the same location as for other operating systems, under our own datadir.

GUI-specific

• The UX for creating a descriptor where a signer is present in different spending paths was
  significantly improved.
• The installation process, as well as the usage of the wallet, was made more user friendly by
  optionally encapsulating the management (download, start and stop) of the bitcoind.

Fixes

• We more gracefully stop the Bitcoin backend poller when the block chain is still in the process of
  being synchronized. This would previously appear to hang and could freeze the GUI.
• The handling of conflicting unconfirmed spend transactions (RBFs) was fixed.
• If paid directly through a coinbase transaction output, the wallet could have previously missed
  it. This was fixed.
• We now correctly treat immature coinbase deposits as unspendable. They are otherwise treated
  similarly to unconfirmed coins.
• We now tell bitcoind to load our watchonly wallet upon startup. Not loading the watchonly wallet
  on startup could make bitcoind unable to load it without reindexing the block chain, if using an
  aggressive pruning configuration.
• lianad will now print a more helpful message on startup failure (and link to the newly added config file example).

GUI-specific

• We now check the network of xpubs when importing a descriptor.
• The GUI would sometimes fail to connect to the Specter DIY signing device.
• We now convey the descriptor registration step on a signing device isn't necessary if none were
  used.
• We could previously appear to hang during shutdown.

Announcement / Archive
GitHub Repo
Website