Citadel v0.2.9 & v0.3.0 LTS Released

Citadel is an open-source bitcoin-centric OS for personal home server.

Citadel v0.2.9 & v0.3.0 LTS Released
  • "We are introducing Citadel 0.2.9, which is the last milestone before 0.3.0."
  • "I started Citadel over two years ago after leaving Umbrel. The goal was to build an easy-to-use, FOSS Bitcoin node management software with Lightning capabilities," wrote the project's developer Aaron Dewes.
  • "Over the past 2 years, I failed at that. The user experience has been terrible for many users, and there have been many bugs. I am slow to respond to support questions."
"Over the past few weeks, I have not responded to a lot of queries, but I have been building a new release. A release that fixes 99% of the issues people had. There will still be bugs, but a lot fewer of them, and nearly none that I know of."
  • "This release is Citadel 0.3.0, which also marks the last “major” update for Citadel. Once this is out, development will focus on Nirvati, which is a completely new way of server management. Citadel 0.4.0 will use Nirvati as its underlying base platform."

Changes in Citadel 0.2.6-0.2.8

In these releases, we’ve done a lot of changes:

  • Tons of bug fixes
  • Port the frontend to Nuxt.js to improve loading performance & remove various bugs
  • Move our code to GitLab
  • Use more shared infrastructure with Nirvati
  • Remove lots of unused legacy code

Changes in Citadel 0.2.9

  • This release implements various changes to improve the user experience further.
  • Our LND app has been updated to LND 0.17.0 and the underlying API that powers the LND integration of our dashboard has received tons of bug fixes and performance improvements.
  • We’ve also refactored our Alby integration for the next Alby release to work with this new API.
  • Another new change is using Arti for outgoing anonymous requests. Arti is a reimplementation of Tor in Rust, and is faster and better than the original Tor. However, it’s features are limited right now, so it does not replace Tor yet.
  • We’ve also cleaned up the implementation of our app system to remove some unused parts.
  • In addition, this release introduces Raspberry Pi 5 compatibility for our OS.
  • This release also features some new apps, packaged by Pranshu Agrawal.

Citadel v0.3.0 LTS

  • With Citadel 0.3.0 becoming an LTS release before Citadel 0.4.0 releases, and it receiving support even after that, Citadel will now longer receive new core features.
  • After Citadel 0.4.0 will be released, the LTS release will stop receiving new apps, but will still get app updates & Bitcoin Core updates, as well as bug fixes for at least one year.

What's coming in Citadel 0.4.0

  • Nirvati is a complete redesign of the original Citadel architecture. It will be available standalone or as part of Citadel, which enhances it with more Bitcoin features.
  • Citadel 0.4.0 will preserve the same features and will have a similar user experience. However, a completely new app system and underlying container infrastructure allows us to implement various new features.
  • The focus of Citadel as a tool built on top of Nirvati will be Bitcoin & Lightning UX, where we can improve a lot.

Full Blog Post / Archive
GitLab Repo