Bitcoin v0.3.19 was released on SourceForge on December 15, 2010. This was the final Bitcoin release from Satoshi Nakamoto, marking the end of his direct involvement in Bitcoin’s software development — closing out the same SourceForge project page he had registered just over two years earlier.
Changes in v0.3.19:
- Added some DoS limits, though Satoshi noted it was “still far from DoS resistant”
- Removed “safe mode” alerts
Satoshi described this as “a minor release to add some DoS protection.” The DoS (Denial of Service) protections were aimed at hardening the network against attacks that could overwhelm individual nodes, an increasing concern as Bitcoin’s visibility and value grew.
The removal of “safe mode” alerts was also notable. Since version 0.3.11, an alert signed with Satoshi’s key could put a node into safe mode, which stopped six JSON-RPC commands used by automated websites; the status-bar warning was a separate function. In his announcement Satoshi called safe mode alerts “a temporary measure after the 0.3.9 overflow bug” and said it was better not to have them “for the sake of appearances.” Alerts could still show a warning on the status bar, and a longer invalid chain could still trigger safe mode. What ended was the alert key’s power to switch it on. This pairing — added DoS limits alongside the removal of safe mode — is what Satoshi’s code-analysis entry singles out as marking his final activity on the project.
This release came just days after v0.3.18 and was the final piece of software Satoshi personally shipped. The build was announced on December 12 in Satoshi’s last public BitcoinTalk post, and the package landed on SourceForge three days later. The SVN repository’s own committer record dates the underlying tag commit itself to r201 on December 13 — Satoshi’s last release commit before one final small fix, r202, two days later.
Satoshi continued only private email correspondence after this release — the last known email to Martti Malmi was sent on February 22, 2011, transferring the mailing list password, and the absolute final known email went to Gavin Andresen on April 26, 2011, transferring the network alert key, before Satoshi went silent.
