There is a debate happening inside Bitcoin right now that many Bitcoiners have never heard of and it has quietly split the node-running network. The software your node runs is your vote in the network and encodes what you believe Bitcoin is for. This article covers what is happening, why it matters, how to choose, and cast your vote in the future of Bitcoin.
This piece is a structural observation drawn from personal experience and independent research. It‘s not financial advice. Full disclaimers.
Key Takeaways
- Bitcoin Core raised the default OP_RETURN data limit to 100,000 bytes in v30. Bitcoin Knots keeps the previous 83-byte limit.
- Bitcoin Knots now runs on over 22% of all reachable nodes, up from near zero in early 2024.
- BIP-110 is a temporary, auto-expiring proposal to restrict non-monetary data at the protocol level. No existing Bitcoin is affected.
- The choice between Core and Knots is a statement about what you believe Bitcoin is for.
What Is a Bitcoin Node?
A Bitcoin node is a device such as a computer or mini PC running Bitcoin software that independently verifies every transaction and every block on the network. It does not trust anyone else’s version of the chain and its role is to verify transactions for itself.
This is what makes Bitcoin decentralised and secure. The more people running their own nodes, the harder it is for any single entity, whether a government, a corporation, or a developer group, to change the rules.
A node is your vote; and it’s also your verification. When you run a node, you decide what Bitcoin is, and that choice matters more now than ever. At the moment, that choice comes down to three main options: Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Knots, or Bitcoin Knots with support for BIP-110. Here is what each one means.
What Is Bitcoin Core?
Bitcoin Core is the original Bitcoin software and is maintained by a group of open-source developers. It is what most nodes have run since Bitcoin’s beginning. Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the first version. Core is the reference implementation: The one that sets the baseline for how the network behaves. For most of Bitcoin’s history, Core and Bitcoin were effectively synonymous, but that is no longer true.
As of 2026, Bitcoin Core’s development process has come under serious scrutiny. A funding organisation called Brink, co-founded by longtime Core developer John Newbery, channelled grants to developers who subsequently rose to maintainer positions inside the project. Maintainers hold write access to the codebase and, under a precedent established during this period, new maintainers came to be nominated by existing ones rather than through open community process.[1][2][3]
Critics including several senior contributors raised concerns about influence over development decisions and closed loops: The same nonprofit funding multiple maintainers, personal relationships overlapping with professional ones, and experienced independent developers being pushed out while those better at navigating internal politics advanced beyond those with more experience.
This is the structural vulnerability in Bitcoin’s human layer. The protocol itself cannot be corrupted from the outside. But the people who steward the reference implementation can be influenced, and that is where the pressure has been applied, leading to a wider number of node runners choosing Bitcoin Knots instead.
What Is Bitcoin Knots?
Bitcoin Knots is an alternative implementation of the same Bitcoin protocol, maintained by developer Luke Dashjr. It tracks Bitcoin Core’s codebase closely and validates the same chain. The difference is in what it filters and what it allows. Knots is stricter by default and it is designed for people who want Bitcoin to behave like Satoshi Nakamoto originally created it: Money. It gives node operators more control over what their node accepts into its own mempool, the waiting room for transactions before they are confirmed.
Every node maintains its own mempool, the holding area for unconfirmed transactions not yet included in a block. When your node receives an unconfirmed transaction from another node, it first checks whether the transaction violates consensus rules. If it does, the transaction is dropped. If it passes consensus but violates your node’s own mempool policy, it is also dropped and not forwarded.
This is where Core and Knots diverge sharply, notably due to Core’s raising the OP_RETURN limits.
The OP_RETURN Problem
OP_RETURN is a small field inside a Bitcoin transaction designed to carry a tiny amount of data. When Bitcoin Core standardised it in v0.9.0 in 2014, the cap was 40 bytes.[4] It was designed for things like timestamps or short identifiers. The cap was later raised to 80 bytes of data (83 bytes of total script space), where it stayed for a decade until Core v30 expanded it to 100,000 bytes in 2025. At 80 bytes you can store a small hash, but at 100,000 bytes you can store a recognisable image or a short video clip. Allowing this much data on the blockchain deflects from Bitcoin’s original purpose as a monetary network and opens the door to becoming free, decentralized data storage for images and video files. The door Satoshi left slightly ajar, Core v.30 kicked wide open.
Many users were outraged, but Bitcoin Core chose to implement the change anyway. To push back, 20% of all reachable Bitcoin nodes are now running Bitcoin Knots. Many others have not upgraded their Bitcoin Core implementation to the newest version. As of May 21st 2026, just over 50% of Core nodes are still running versions 28.1.0 and below. Per Clark Moody’s dashboard, only 16.05% of nodes are running the software with the higher OP_RETURN limits. [8] That is strong signal.
| Source | Total nodes | Knots nodes | Knots % | Knots + BIP-110 (RDTS*) | RDTS % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luke Dashjr [6] | 91,562 | 18,838 | 20.40% | 9,253 | 10.11% |
| Coin Dance [7] | 23,795 | 5,390 | 22.65% | N/A | N/A |
| Clark Moody [8] | 24,108 | ~4,950 | ~20.5% | N/A | N/A |
Note: Luke’s figures include non-listening nodes. Coin Dance and Clark Moody count only reachable listening nodes, which is why totals differ. Data was pulled May 21st 2026. *BIP 110 is also known as RDTS: “Reduce Data Temporary Software”
Bitcoin Knots keeps the 83-byte limit that stood before v30. A Knots node will not hold or forward transactions that exceed it. This matters because when large amounts of non-monetary data flood the chain, block space fills up, transaction fees rise for ordinary payments, the blockchain grows faster, and running a full node becomes more expensive. The cost of participation goes up, especially in locations where hardware costs are prohibitive. This compromises decentralization because fewer people can run nodes. Less decentralization compromises Bitcoin’s security. No security and no decentralization compromises the very potential of Bitcoin replacing fiat. It’s a major problem if we believe bitcoin is money that can end a 5,000 year economic karmic cycle.
This is the practical difference between the two clients right now and what we choose to run seriously matters because the nodes are in control of the network.
Why Your Vote Matters
A common misconception is that miners control Bitcoin, or that large holders like Michael Saylor do. They do not. Miners decide which transactions to include in a block, but nodes decide whether to accept that block at all. If a miner produces a block that violates the rules nodes enforce, every node on the network rejects it. The miner wasted the energy. Holders have no technical say whatsoever. The nodes are the referees. They are the ones actually running and enforcing the rules of the network, and every node operator chooses which rules to enforce by choosing which software to run.
This is why the choice between Core and Knots is not a minor technical preference but rather a vote on what Bitcoin is. Most people who own Bitcoin have never run a node. They hold the asset but have handed all rule enforcement to someone else: An exchange, a wallet provider, or by default, whoever maintains the software most nodes happen to run.
Running a node changes that. It is one of the few places in the entire financial world where an ordinary person has genuine, direct, technical agency. No bank, no government, no corporation can override your node. You are not signing a petition or casting a vote that gets diluted. Your node either accepts a block or it does not. That is real power, and most Bitcoin holders do not know they have access to it. But maybe you heard about Bip 110 and are wondering how it fits into all of this?
What Is BIP-110?
BIP-110 is a formal proposal to temporarily restrict how much non-monetary data can be embedded into Bitcoin transactions at the protocol level. It was written by a pseudonymous developer named Dathon Ohm.[5] Its stated goal is direct: Make Bitcoin the world’s preferred money. It is a soft fork, meaning it adds restrictions rather than loosening them and does not create a new chain. It is also designed to automatically expire after approximately one year if no further consensus forms.
The first block ever signaling support for BIP-110 was mined on March 1, 2026. As of May 2026, miner signaling is near zero. Mandatory signaling begins around August or September 2026. Activation requires 55% of miners to signal support, which has not happened yet. BIP-110 does not touch any existing Bitcoin. Every coin already on the chain is permanently exempt. The restrictions only apply to new transactions created after activation.
So what’s the relationship between BIP-110 and Bitcoin Knots? BIP-110 is a proposed network-wide rule change. Bitcoin Knots is what you can do right now, today, without waiting for that proposal to activate. When you run Knots, your node already filters out the oversized OP_RETURN transactions that BIP-110 would restrict at the protocol level for everyone.
| Feature | Bitcoin Core | Bitcoin Knots | Bitcoin Knots + BIP-110 (RDTS) |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is it | Reference implementation | Alternative implementation | Knots with BIP-110 soft fork client |
| Maintained by | Broad contributor group | Luke Dashjr and contributors | Proposed by Dathon Ohm |
| OP_RETURN limit | 100,000 bytes | 83 bytes | 83 bytes, enforced at consensus level after activation |
| Spam filtering | Permissive by default | Yes, configurable at mempool level | Yes, plus BIP-110 rule enforcement |
| Inscriptions and BRC20 | Relayed and mined | Filtered from mempool | Blocked from being mined after activation |
| Node cost | Higher due to spam and bloat | Lower bandwidth and mempool load | Lowest, less spam to relay and store |
| Decentralization effect | Reduces it over time via higher node costs | Improves it via lower costs | Further improves it |
| BIP-110 miner signaling | No | No | Yes |
| Can orphan non-compliant blocks | No | No | Yes, after activation threshold reached |
| Activation requirement | N/A | N/A | 55% miner signaling in one difficulty period |
| Expiry | No | No | Soft fork expires ~1 year after activation, rules revert |
The difference is scope: Your Knots node enforces the stricter policy for yourself and refuses to relay what it considers spam to other nodes. BIP-110, if activated, would make that same restriction a consensus rule the entire network must follow. Running Knots is the individual action, BIP-110 is the collective one, aimed at the same target.
Your Agency in Shaping The Future
This debate comes down to one question: What do you believe Bitcoin is?
- If you believe Bitcoin is money, a peer-to-peer payment network designed to move value without a central authority, then run Bitcoin Knots + Bip 110. Data bloat raises node costs. Signal support for BIP-110 if you are able to.
- If you believe Bitcoin is a censorship-resistant data layer, a protocol that should place no restrictions whatsoever on what a transaction contains and you want to store other people’s .jpeg images and videos on your node, then run Core.
Doing nothing is also a choice. Running the default software because you never thought about it is also a vote. You are encoding a position whether you mean to or not. The only question is whether that position is conscious and yours. If this resonates, Beyond Money goes deeper into Bitcoin as money.
The network is not something that happens to you, it’s something you can participate in and defend. If you believe Bitcoin is money, then run Knots. If you would rather your node store and relay other people’s data for free, run Core. If you’re interested in running your own Bitcoin node, the best place to start is bip110.org/howto, which has step-by-step installation guides.
| Platform | Bitcoin Core | Bitcoin Knots | Knots + BIP110 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Umbrel | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Start9 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| myNode | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Parmanode | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| RaspiBlitz | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Direct Install | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
The table above shows which node platforms support each Bitcoin client. Bitcoin Core and Knots are now supported everywhere. Knots + BIP110 is available on most.
Sources
[1] hodlonaut. (2026, March 27). The capture: An investigation into how informal power over Bitcoin Core was assembled, exercised, and defended — Article one of four: The network. Citadel21. https://www.citadel21.com/the-network
[2] hodlonaut. (2026, April 29). The capture: An investigation into how informal power over Bitcoin Core was assembled, exercised, and defended — Article two of four: The lever. Citadel21. https://www.citadel21.com/the-lever
[4] Bitcoin Core. (2014, March 19). Bitcoin Core version 0.9.0 released. Bitcoin.org. https://bitcoin.org/en/release/v0.9.0
[5] Ohm, D. (2025, December 3). BIP-110: Reduced data temporary softfork (Draft). GitHub. https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0110.mediawiki
[6] Dashjr, L. (2026). Bitcoin network statistics. Luke.dashjr.org. https://luke.dashjr.org/programs/bitcoin/files/charts/software.html
[7] Coin Dance. (2026). Bitcoin Knots nodes summary. https://coin.dance/nodes/knots
[8] Clark Moody. (2026). Bitcoin dashboard. https://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/dashboard/