lnd v0.14.2 - Release Candidate 1

[Olaoluwa Osuntokun]

Hi y'all,

Today we tagged the much initial release candidate for the v0.14.2 release:
https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/releases/tag/v0.14.2-beta.rc1


This release mostly contains some important bug fixes, as well as usability
enticements for features we shipped in 0.14.0 like the new remote signer
functionality.

Items of note in this release include:

  * A way to convert an existing lnd node into a watch-only node (no private
    keys on the instance) that can be used to send signing requests to a
    newly initialized remote signer node. The remote signer node also node
    longer requires a chain backed, as the PSBT requests include all the
    information needed to sign anything we need it to. This includes some
    new PSBT extensions for the "tweaked signing" we use to do things like
    sign for revocation keys, etc. We'll likely eventually create a small
    BIP for these extensions, as they're generally useful for any other
    Lightning implementation.

  * Several improvements to the recently released postgres backend including
    a significant speed up in perceived start time due to channel graph
    loading optimizations.

  * A fix that would prevent a runtime error for neutrino nodes running with
    the web API fee source.

  * More bug fixes to the new-ish explicit channel funding protocol feature.

  * Two rare crash bugs related to the mission control store and p2p message
    handling.

  * A fix for a memory-leak in the peer goroutine that causes memory to rise
    steadily over time due to lack of resources being cleaned up.

  * Fixes to p2p interaction that would at times cause a persistent peer
    request to be canceled.

  * A bug fix to a rounding error related to fee policies, as well as a new
    ppm based fee setting to allow more precise fee rates (complements the
    existing decimal/rate input).

The full set of release notes can be found here:
https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/master/docs/release-notes/release-notes-0.14.2.md

Please don't hesitate to reach out if your deployment needs help/guidance
w.r.t updating, or you have concerns about backwards compatibility or other
regressions related to the included PRs!

The next major release (0.15) is tentatively scheduled for March/April. Of
note in this release is the planned support for complete on-chain taproot
interaction (addresses, PSBT extensions, script path import, updated
signing+funding utilities, etc, etc.), as well as a number of disk space
optimizations that will address the current issues w.r.t DB size growth and
slow compaction.

Keep an eye on the 0.15 milestone tracker for changes to the planned PR-set
for 0.15: https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/milestone/31. As is, many
of the items listed will likely shrink (de-prioritizing other major features
unless a dedicated external contributor is available, and prioritizing some
important stability improvements) over the next week or so as we solidify
our focus.

-- Laolu

[Olaoluwa Osuntokun]

Hi y'all,

I've been running this release on a few of my personal nodes, as well as our
production staging environments. So far so good, with no major issues or
stability issues encountered. If everything proceeds on this track, we'll cut
the actual release tomorrow: Feb 2nd 2022.

Thanks to all those that contributed to this release (issues, PRs, testing,
etc)!

-- Laolu