News · Oct 22, 2026

Knots 29.4.3rc2 test build ships the 180-day lock and spam filters

By xbt.live · 3 minute read

The 180-day rolling coinbase lock is now in a build people can run. A community test build of the next Bitcoin Knots, 29.4.3rc2, went up overnight with Knots PR #468 in place of the one-year lock. It also turns on four of the anti-spam fixes we covered yesterday, including the BPUB filter. It is not an official release, and the PR is still open, but at least one node is already running it on mainnet.

Card: Knots 29.4.3rc2 community test build includes the 180-day rolling lock (#468) and four spam filters, with 1,438 blocks to block 979,920

What's in rc2

The 180-day rolling lock (#468). Every reward mined from block 979,919 on waits 25,920 blocks, about 180 days, until RDTS expires on Sept 1, 2027. It replaces the one-year lock (#429) that was in rc1 two weeks ago. Rewards locked now still unlock at 979,920. The five options
Spam filters on by default. #319, #400, #422 and #463 count more hidden data as data: data envelopes, dead script branches, keys no signature can prove, and BPUB files. Two new settings, -rejectdeadbranches and -rejectbpub, are on unless you turn them off. What BPUB is
Smaller fixes: a testnet4 RDTS extension to April 2027 (#459), a faster-start snapshot at block 976,000 (#444), cleaner Tor shutdown, a reindex deadlock fix and a few RPC fixes.

What "community test build" means

The build was published by kwsantiago in the knots-dev repository, not by the official Bitcoin Knots project, and it says plainly: "Not an official release. For test nodes only." It follows a draft release recipe from Knots maintainer Luke Dashjr's repository (luke-jr/tmp#6), so it shows what the next release is expected to contain. The official site still lists 29.4.2 as the latest release, and on GitHub #468 is approved by three reviewers but not merged.

Luis Marcano (@MarcanoFilms), who mines with his own node and DATUM gateway, posted this morning that his mainnet node runs rc2 and enforces the 180-day lock ahead of the flag day, with the build GPG-verified and "zero reorgs." He also said he still prefers one year.

The clock

The chain is at block 978,482, so the rule's start height is 1,437 blocks away, about 9 to 10 days. For the 180-day lock to take effect cleanly, an official release has to ship and enough nodes and miners have to run it before then. Nodes still on 29.4.2 would agree with rc2 nodes until the first reward mined after 979,919 is spent early. With 29.4.2's own relay policy, reviewers estimate that wouldn't happen before about block 986,399, roughly six weeks later, which gives late upgraders some room.

What to do

Node runners: rc2 is for test nodes. Wait for the official release on bitcoinknots.org unless you're comfortable testing. If you do run it, verify the signatures first; the release page has the commands.
Miners: plan for new rewards to be locked about six months from around Nov 1, and ask your pool when it will upgrade. Questions to ask
Everyone: the locked rewards from the last 45 days still unlock at block 979,920. Live countdown

rc2 release notes PR #468

Sources: the knots-dev 29.4.3rc2 release page (published Oct 22, 2026, 05:03 UTC), Bitcoin Knots PR #468 and its reviews, bitcoinknots.org, and Luis Marcano's post on X, Oct 22. Block height from xbt.live at 978,482. 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).