Meowcoin Apex: rc2 — First Public Release Candidate

Today we're releasing Meowcoin Apex rc2 — the release candidate we're putting in front of the broader community. Meowcoin Core, rebuilt on a modern Bitcoin Core 30.2 foundation. MeowPow, assets, and everything that defines Meowcoin is here, running on infrastructure that's years ahead of where we were.

This is a release candidate, which means it's ready for serious testing but not yet a general recommendation for everyday users. Read the release notes carefully before running it.

A note on rc1

A quiet rc1 went out yesterday as part of our internal process. During final validation we caught a small but important issue — a tightening of asset validation logic during the rebase meant that a historical asset transaction on the live chain was being rejected during a full IBD sync from genesis. The fix was straightforward, but it required a resync of the entire chain to confirm. rc2 has completed that full sync successfully. Asset creation and transfer are confirmed working on top of a fully validated chain.

The headline: PSBT comes to assets

PSBT (Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions, adapted for Meowcoin) now works for asset transfers. Multiple parties can cooperate to sign the same asset transaction without sharing private keys — the same foundation that powers multisig and hardware wallet workflows on Bitcoin, now available for Meowcoin assets.

The door this opens is genuinely exciting: a decentralized marketplace for Meowcoin assets and NFTs becomes a real, buildable thing. Buyers, sellers, and co-signers can assemble and finalize transfers in a standard, interoperable way. Every Meowcoin asset type is part of this picture.

What's in rc2

Asset operations — Issuance, transfer, and reissue work reliably end-to-end. Coin selection, signing, fee handling, and change all behave the way you'd expect. Asset operations feel solid, not fragile.

Mempool and network policy — The mempool handles assets more completely, catching bad transactions earlier while letting honest traffic flow cleanly. Package-aware checks are tighter across the board.

Consensus and RPC — Edge cases in asset recognition and RPC amount display have been cleaned up and made consistent.

Qt wallet — Asset screens are faster and more responsive. Balances and metadata refresh smoothly without the UI feeling sluggish.

RBF — Replace-by-fee has been tested across this work and confirmed working against legacy nodes without issue.

Full IBD validated — rc2 has synced the complete Meowcoin chain from genesis with no validation errors. This is the baseline we needed before putting this in front of the community.

What to know before running rc2

This release uses the same data directory as previous Meowcoin versions. Back up your wallet before running it. We recommend renaming your existing Meowcoin data folder to meowcoin-legacy so you can switch between Apex and legacy easily.

This release is largely limited to legacy addresses. Newer address formats exist in the codebase but the majority of the network runs legacy, so that's where compatibility lives for now. The minimum feerate for transactions to propagate on the legacy network is 0.010 — very low feerate transactions won't get picked up.

AuxPoW merge mining has not been confirmed functional in this release. MeowPow mining has been tested and works.

One important change for longtime users: Apex does not use seed phrases the way legacy Meowcoin did. This is a consequence of key architecture changes made to Bitcoin Core over the past several years. Your existing wallet.dat is still compatible — but seed phrase recovery works differently now. This will have implications for Electrum users, and we're working through that migration path.

Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3) Users

Before launching, you'll need to sign the binaries:

codesign -s - meowcoin-qt
codesign -s - meowcoind
codesign -s - meowcoin-cli

Then launch normally.

What's coming next

Shipping rc2 is a milestone, not a finish line. While we continue hardening Apex toward a final release, there's infrastructure work happening in parallel. The Electrum server that backs wallet connectivity will need foundational changes to properly support Apex. The web wallet and block explorers are also in scope for updates as the network transitions. We'll be working through that carefully — the goal is a smooth migration, not a forced cutover that leaves anyone behind.

Get involved

If you're a pool operator interested in running Apex, or a developer who wants to dig in and help move Meowcoin into its next era — we want to hear from you. Come say hi in the official Meowcoin Discord. This project moves faster with more hands on it.

Download rc2 and follow updates at mewccrypto.com and in the official Meowcoin Discord.