News · Oct 20, 2026

Five proposals, 11 days: the fight over XBT's coinbase lock

By xbt.live · 4 minute read

Chart of lock lengths under each proposal

Two new proposals to change XBT's coinbase lock went up on Bitcoin Knots today, making five open options with about 11 days to go. None is merged or released. To matter, one has to ship in a Knots release and be running on nodes before block 979,920, when about 20,250 XBT of locked mining rewards becomes spendable.

Bar chart: how long a new XBT mining reward would wait under each proposal, from 100 blocks today after the unlock to 45, 105, 180 and 280 days, and until Sept 1, 2027

The five options

Proposal	Rewards locked now (~20,250 XBT)	New rewards after 979,920
Nothing ships	Spendable at block 979,920, all at once	100 blocks by consensus. Knots relay policy still asks 6,480 blocks
#429 (chrisguida)	Stay locked until Sept 1, 2027	Locked until Sept 1, 2027
#434 (NoFlames-bit)	Spendable at block 979,920	Released in steps: 105 days, 105 days, then Sept 1, 2027
#467	Unlock one block's reward at a time, about 450 XBT a day	Each waits 6,480 blocks (~45 days) until Sept 1, 2027
#468 (BitcoinMechanic), new today	Spendable at block 979,920	Each waits 25,920 blocks (~180 days) until Sept 1, 2027
#469 (ZERODAYKEK), new today	Each waits 40,320 blocks (~280 days) from when it was mined	Each waits ~280 days, with no end date

Days assume the 10-minute block target. Real time floats with block speed.

#468: a rolling 180-day lock

Opened this afternoon by BitcoinMechanic. Rewards mined from block 979,919 would each wait 25,920 blocks, about 180 days, before they can be spent. The first covered reward could move at block 1,005,839. It doesn't touch the coins locked now: those still release at 979,920 as planned.

Coverage ends for new rewards when RDTS, the temporary BIP-110 soft fork, expires on Sept 1, 2027. A reward mined just before that date still serves its full 180 days. The PR says the hope is to keep a rolling window after that, longer or shorter "depending on the health of the network", but that would need a later decision. It ships with 44 unit test cases and 9 functional tests passing.

In round numbers, a 180-day window holds about 81,000 XBT of new rewards at any time (25,920 blocks x 3.125 XBT).

#469: 280 days, and BIP-110 forever

Opened an hour and a half later by ZERODAYKEK. It builds on #467 and changes two settings:

The lock becomes 40,320 blocks, about 280 days. The PR pitches it as a middle ground between today's 45 days and #429's year, and notes it's the length of a 40-week pregnancy.
RDTS never expires. The BIP-110 limits (800,000-weight blocks, 34-byte output scripts, the OP_RETURN cap) would stay in force permanently instead of ending Sept 1, 2027. That's the bigger change, and the PR flags it for reviewers.

It also covers the rewards locked now. Under #469 nothing unlocks at 979,920: the first reward from block 973,440 could move at block 1,013,760, around mid-2027. A full 280-day window holds about 126,000 XBT.

The other three

#429, updated yesterday, holds every reward from block 973,440 until Sept 1, 2027. That's about 156,000 XBT by then. How #429 works
#434 keeps the 979,920 release, then locks the next two 105-day periods and releases each in one step, with the rest freed at Sept 1, 2027.
#467 keeps today's 45 days but makes it rolling, so the cliff at 979,920 becomes a drip of about one block's reward per block.

The deadline

The chain is at block 978,224. That leaves 1,696 blocks, about 11 days at current speed, so the unlock lands around Oct 31 to Nov 1. Each proposal is a soft fork, so it only works if miners and nodes run it before the first block that would otherwise allow a spend. For #434, #467, #468 and #469 that's block 979,920. #429 has the same deadline. If nothing ships in time, the consensus lock ends on schedule, and only Knots' relay policy keeps asking for 6,480 blocks, which miners who build their own blocks can skip. Why it's a cliff

Luke Dashjr's community poll on extending the lock (our story) asked about keeping 45 days until RDTS expiry, which is closest to #467. Miners split publicly: one, @JoshuaFortezza, voted "an emphatic YES". For a video walkthrough of the extension ideas, see Bitcoin University.

What miners should do now

Plan as if the lock ends at 979,920, because that's what the released code does.
Watch for a Knots release, not a PR. Only a release that nodes run can change the rules.
Ask your pool how it will pay out under each case. Four questions to ask

Live unlock countdown Lock Pressure chart

Sources: the Bitcoin Knots pull requests (#429, #434, #468, #469), read Oct 20, 2026, and mempool.guide at block 978,224. XBT figures assume the 3.125 XBT subsidy and leave out fees. Not financial advice.

Have an XBT story? Write for xbt.live.

Life support

So the patient was moved to the emergency room. In August, the SHA-256 miners left on their own chain, and the nodes enforcing BIP-110's rules kept going without them. At the end of the month, the rule-keeping chain switched its mining to BLAKE2b so the captured SHA-256 hash couldn't take it over. That chain is XBT. The full story is in How Bitcoin kept its rules and moved to BLAKE2b.

Patients on life support don't look healthy, and XBT doesn't either. About 102 XBT buy one BTC. It has had three bear markets in six weeks. That's what a rescue looks like from the outside. The people in the ER right now, the node runners, the miners, the builders shipping wallets and pools every week, are doing the work while the outcome is anything but certain. If the patient makes it, they're the ones who saved it.

The strangest part: you already own it

If you held bitcoin before Aug 8, 2026, you hold XBT. Same coins, same addresses, same keys. The proof of work that secured your coins for 17 years secures them on both chains, because the history is identical up to block 961,631. Every UTXO that existed before the split exists on XBT. The XBT you hold cost you exactly what your BTC cost you.

Since the split, the two histories have gone different ways. XBT's blocks follow BIP-110's rules: less data that isn't money, a cleaner chain going forward. Not sure what you hold? Check an address.

Two places at once

The body is still on the old chain: the brand, the network effect, the exchange listings, the ticker everyone knows. That doesn't disappear overnight, and we won't pretend it does.

But the thing that made Bitcoin worth caring about was never the brand. It was the idea: money that no state, no company and no small group of operators can change on users without their consent. That idea now lives on the chain whose users enforced their rules when it mattered. The body stayed. The soul moved.

Bitcoin was always a quiet way to separate money from the state. It still is. It just lives somewhere new.

Opinion. Not financial advice. XBT trades on thin markets and can lose most of its value quickly. Price figures as of the evening of Oct 10, 2026 (US Eastern).