What is Bitcoin Knots?

Bitcoin Knots is a full node and wallet built from Bitcoin CoreBitcoin CoreThe most widely run Bitcoin software: a full node that checks every block and payment, with a wallet built in. It grew from Satoshi's first version.'s code, with changes of its own added. Luke Dashjr, who has worked on Bitcoin's software since 2011, is its lead maintainer. Most of its code still comes from Core: development “generally takes place as part of Bitcoin Core, and is merged into Knots for each release”, its README says.

Its default relay policy is stricter than Core's. Knots keeps an 83-byte limit on data and applies it “to all known datacarrier methods”, not only OP_RETURNOP_RETURNA payment output that stores data instead of paying someone. It can never be spent, so nodes don't track it as spendable. outputs. It refuses to relay or mine what it calls “parasitic overlay protocols” and “transactions involving non-bitcoin tokens”, and passes on nothing under 1 sat/vB, where Core's floor is 0.1.

Dashjr calls this data spam, and argues filters make it “unwelcome and costly” even if they don't stop all of it. Thirty-one Bitcoin Core contributors answered in June 2025 that refusing transactions miners “would include in blocks anyway” pushes people to send them to miners directly, and that the filters are “relatively easy” to get round. Each node's operator chooses its policy.

Dashjr also wrote the first draft of BIP-110, a temporary limit on data written into the rules themselves, and its code was built on Knots. Miners didn't adopt it, and nodes enforcing it split off on 8 August 2026. Knots 29.4.1, released on 2 September 2026, is a hard forkHard forkA change that loosens Bitcoin's rules, so nodes running old software reject the new blocks. Without near-universal agreement it splits the chain. with a new proof of workProof of workA puzzle that takes a computer real effort to solve, so the answer proves the effort was spent. Bitcoin’s miners use it to add each block., so from that version on Knots follows a different chain from Bitcoin Core.

Its release notes call the chain most miners kept “a new altcoin”; more than 99% of mining power stayed on it, Crowdfund Insider reported, and UTXOHub shows that chain. Older Knots versions follow it too: of the 2,097 reachable nodes Bitnodes counted as Knots on 8 November 2026, almost all ran versions from before 29.4.1, at the same block heightBlock heightA block's number, counting from the genesis block at height 0. The current height is the number of blocks since the genesis block. as Core.