Bitcoin Core releases update to potentially natively support Apple Silicon (M1 family) chips

As technology in the cryptocurrency space continues to advance, so does the underlying software, including Bitcoin Core.

In particular, Bitcoin Core is programmed to determine which blockchain contains valid Bitcoin transactions, and its users can only accept transactions for that blockchain.

In an announcement on April 22, Zhixiong Pan, a Web3 developer, and researcher, stated that Bitcoin Core had released the final version of update 23.0, which included the addition of a macOS ARM build. This could potentially be the first update to natively support Apple Silicon (M1 family), which is the Bitcoin Core version of the chip.

Pan discovered that the Bitcoin Core client had silently published the final version (the source code for the critical update 23.0) after searching the GitHub repository and spotting the inclusion of a macOS ARM build.

“The Bitcoin Core client quietly released the final version (source code of the important update 23.0), briefly scanned the GitHub Repo, this time it seems that there are no particularly significant new features, but I still see this one: Add macOS ARM build, so this will likely be the first version of Bitcoin Core to natively support Apple Silicon (M1 family) chips.” (Translated from Mandarin).

Bitcoin Core 23.0 to be compiled soon

It is anticipated that the compiled version will be provided shortly, and you will be able to try it out at that point using the source code for version 23.0.

Using Bitcoin Core’s half-yearly upgrade cycle, the next version, 24.0 is expected in October.

“According to the half-yearly update frequency of Bitcoin Core, the next version 24.0 is estimated to be around October,” Pan said.

The proposed release schedule for 23.0, the next major release of Bitcoin Core, was scheduled for April back in September 2021.

It is these users that ensure that Bitcoin remains decentralized since each of them runs their own Bitcoin Core full nodes, and each of those full nodes independently follows the exact same rules to determine which blockchain is valid.