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I recently read an article on Bitcoin Media, that claimed:

Jeff Garzik pointed out that Bitcoin-Qt no longer operates using the IRC bootstrap, and on inspection he’s right. This mainly applies to older versions of bitcoin.

Implying that the IRC channel is no longer used by Bitcoin-QT. Is this true, and if so, which version of the standard Bitcoin client was the first not to use the IRC channel?

ThePiachu
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1 Answers1

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The IRC bootstrapping method is deprecated and default off since the 0.6 release. It's still implemented and can be enabled using the -irc command line option.

The function of the IRC bootstrapping system will get replaced by DNS seeding and peer exchange, however.

Pieter Wuille
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  • And the dns seed can be disabled using: "Don't bootstrap list of peers using DNS" -nodnsseed - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin Related: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi_Client_Node_Discovery#Discovery_Methods – Stephen Gornick Apr 22 '12 at 01:24
  • is there a more in depth description of dns seeding and peer exchange available? – osmosis Apr 25 '12 at 17:15