Important release!

Someone was attacking the blockchain through one old sync protocol weakness. After I've released the 0.8.10 they've wrote me about the attack and complained that I've fixed it too fast.
This release presents more fixes for sync protocol.

1. Important fixes of sync protocol.
2. More defence against blockchain attacks.
3. Updated dependencies.

Very important fix of sync protocol!

If you have a wrong blockchain, you need to delete it and update ALFIS.

New Features

• System tray icon — ALFIS can now run with a hidden UI and be shown/restored via tray icon actions (Windows, Linux) (#397)
• Dark theme — Updated UI styles with dark theme support
• Adaptive DNS server selection — NS servers are now selected based on RTT (round-trip time) banding, automatically preferring faster servers
• Adaptive forwarder selection — RTT-based server selection extended to configured DNS forwarders as well
• DNS cache memory limit — Cache now enforces a configurable memory limit instead of growing unbounded
• Bare IP forwarders — Config now accepts plain IP addresses for DNS forwarders (without requiring a full URL)

Bug Fixes & Improvements

• Fixed large DNS responses over DoH — Resolved issue where very large DNS results failed over DNS-over-HTTPS (#411)
• Fixed 0x20 encoding in DNS cache — Cache now correctly handles case-randomized query names
• Disabled 0x20 encoding for NS queries — Prevents issues with authoritative servers that don't preserve query name casing
• Fixed TXT record parsing — Corrected a bug in DNS TXT record deserialization
• Faster initial sync — Blockchain initial synchronization is significantly faster
• Fixed sync regression — Resolved a bug in the new sync logic
• DNS server starts earlier — DNS server now initializes before blockchain sync completes, reducing startup latency
• Windows service improvements — Made the Windows service handler more robust
• Tuned DoH HTTP client — Improved HTTPS client settings for DNS-over-HTTPS requests
• Disabled DevTools & context menu in release builds

Internal / CI

• Updated dependencies
• Updated CI workflows for parallel release builds
• Reduced noisy ureq trace logging

Important notice

The GPG key for the Debian repo has expired. The recommended solution is in #412

DNS Improvements and Bug Fixes

New Features

• HTTPS DNS Record Support (Type 65): Full RFC 9460 compliant implementation for HTTPS records

Bug Fixes

• Fixed DNS domain name case preservation issues affecting DNS 0x20 encoding
• Fixed primary monitor detection on Linux systems where display detection could fail

Maintenance

• Updated CI for release building
• Updated README documentation

Key Changes

GUI & Cross-Platform

• Migrated UI from unsupported webview to wry crate for improved Linux compatibility and future stability.

DNS Security Enhancements

• Implemented ephemeral ports for DNS queries.
• Added DNS 0x20 encoding for enhanced security.

Bug Fixes & Improvements

• Automatic config migration for incorrect test port (42440 → 4244).
• Fixed test warnings.
• Updated all dependencies.

This version focuses on improving cross-platform stability and enhancing DNS security features while maintaining compatibility with existing configurations.

New

• Added Windows service mode.

Bug Fixes & Improvements

• Fixed resolution of TLSA records.
• Improved P2P connectivity.
• Added logging system to know where deadlocks can occur.
• Updated a lot of dependencies.
• Fixed UI for TXT records.
• Possibly fixed the nastiest bug of CPU hogging.

Changes

• There is no MIPS builds, as this architecture was moved to Tier 3. Will find the way to build for them later.

Bug Fixes & Improvements

• Various fixes and stability improvements.

Bug Fixes & Improvements

• Some people had complaint about DNS resolver in ALFIS, that it is overwhelmed with requests, and at some point it just stops to handle DNS requests at all. For some reason I didn't see the problem in that code of DNS resolver, but today it hit me - the work handling by all that threads is wrong.

So, the bug of DNS resolver is resolved ;)
Now, if you have threads set to some high number, like 100 or 200, you can lower that significantly. I recommend the number around your CPU core count. It will suffice.

Bug Fixes & Improvements

• Another network fixes release. I hope it will work decently.

Bug Fixes & Improvements

• Network improvements.