Lately, the community has been keeping a warm discussion around what should be the updates implemented to the bitcoin core. Many developer teams have been presenting and working on their own versions of the new release. Now a new Bitcoin Core Candidate Release has been announced and Binaries for the Bitcoin Core version 0.11.2rc1 are now available.
Release candidates are test versions for releases that are launched in beta versions to be tested. This is a release candidate for a new version release to update the bitcoin core software. It aims to implement security and bug fixes, the BIP65 (CLTV) and other minor corrections. This BIP is a proposal to rewrite the conceptual scheme used in picking up time-locked transaction’s qualification to be included in a block.
The latest Bitcoin Core 0.11.2 Candidate version focused on key changes that address the declining number of nodes and how transaction fees are set for the Bitcoin Core wallet.
Wladimir J. Van der Laan the developer in charge announced the first release candidate for Bitcoin (BTC) Core 0.11.2: This is a new minor version release, bringing bug fixes, the BIP65 (CLTV) consensus change, and relay policy preparation for BIP113. A new change on how the median of the last 11 blocks is used instead of the block’s timestamp, ensuring that it increases monotonically with each block was implemented as well.
Van der Laan wrote on Github:
“This release includes several changes related to the BIP65 soft fork which redefines the existing OP_NOP2 opcode as OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY (CLTV) so that a transaction output can be made unspendable until a specified point in the future. This release will only relay and mine transactions spending a CLTV output if they comply with the BIP65 rules as provided in code. This release will produce version 4 blocks by default.”
This version incorporates Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 65: At present, transactions are excluded from inclusion in a block if the present time or block height is less than or equal to that specified in the locktime. This BIP proposes comparing the locktime against the median of the past 11 block’s timestamps, rather than the timestamp of the block including the transaction.
The latest Bitcoin Core candidate includes a consensus library which will streamline the way how developers can get involved with these releases.
Binaries for bitcoin Core version 0.11.2rc1 are now available from: Bitcoin.org .
Cyberdexter 
ben_btc 
Nice write-up Nuno, thanks.
Forgive my ignorance, how does this have any effect on the declining number of nodes?