The 180-day lock dropped its cliff fix. XBT's unlock is back on
For about 18 hours, the 180-day rolling lock (Knots #468) also fixed XBT's unlock cliff. Then its author took the fix back out. As the PR stands tonight, it locks only rewards mined from block 979,919 on. The roughly 16,450 XBT mined under today's 45-day rule still unlock together at block 979,920, about 8 days from now.
What happened
- Oct 22, evening (UTC): BitcoinMechanic folded #477 into #468. Rewards mined from 973,440 to 979,918 would keep their own 45-day clock, so they would trickle out one block at a time instead of all at once. He wrote: "Rewards mined at heights 973440–979918 now retain individual 6,480-block maturity (approximately 45 days), avoiding the mass unlock at 979920."
- The pushback: some reviewers who had backed #468 switched to NACK, saying the change rewrites the rules for coins that were already mined.
- Oct 23, 15:28 UTC: BitcoinMechanic reverted it. "I am reverting this PR back to its prior state by undoing the addition of #477," he wrote, adding that "this change made the PR less popular overall."
- Oct 23, 19:48 UTC: Knots maintainer Luke Dashjr posted a Concept NACK on the PR. On X a day earlier, he had said he was against the lock but would accept it. That story
The fight: is it retroactive?
The whole argument is about the coins already locked. Should a new rule change when they unlock?
"#477 rewrites the maturity of rewards that have already been mined under the temporary rule activated by #419... Approving the package requires accepting that already-accepted outputs can have their spendability altered after the fact by a later rule. That is a retroactive change."
SeventyEi8ht, switching from Concept ACK to NACK
"NACK on unlocking the stratum attack coins. I like the rest of this proposal. Must contain #477 #478 #479 or any other similar code."
FlyTheElephant1, author of the cliff fixes
"They are unlocked by the previous fork. Encumbering this PR with the obligation to further encumber those already-mined coins is not a condition most people consider necessary to supporting this PR."
BitcoinMechanic, replying
Luke's NACK
"Concept NACK. This seems to accomplish nothing (strictly regarding emergency justifications; it's too short to withhold payment to Stratum hashers without having to do yet another softfork in 4 months), keeps us in "emergency mode" unnecessarily, releases the Stratum rewards for the past month early unnecessarily for no reason(why encumber new, properly mined rewards, while letting the exploitative Stratum ones go??)..."
Not everyone moved. "Concept Re-ACK... Community strongly prefers Long CBM. This gets us to 6 months rolling," wrote Daamir-Al-Adel. Chris Guida said he is still a Concept ACK, and that if there's no consensus in time, the activation height can simply be pushed back: "This same proposal was designed to be able to have its activation delayed without changing the design to allow more time for review." kwsantiago: "Still concept ACK, though I'd prefer letting the current rule expire and planning a proper softfork timeline."
Every lock PR still in play
| PR | What it does | Fixes the cliff? |
|---|---|---|
| #468 | 180-day rolling lock on rewards from 979,919 until RDTS expires (Sept 1, 2027). 4 approving reviews. | No (fix removed) |
| #477 | Coins mined 973,440 to 979,918 keep their own 45-day clock. | Yes |
| #478 | Moves the 180-day start back to 973,440, so locked coins get 180 days too. | Yes |
| #479 | Locked coins get 180 days, then a 45-day stretch of normal 100-block maturity, then 180 days again. | Yes |
| #476 | 1-year rolling lock on every reward from 973,440, unlocking one block's reward per block. Not tied to RDTS. | Yes |
| #480 | Makes today's 45-day rolling lock permanent. Opened tonight. | Yes |
| #467 | Keeps the 45-day rolling lock until RDTS expires. | Yes |
| #469 | 280-day rolling lock and RDTS forever. Closed by its author: "no consensus reached". | Closed |
Older options (#429 one year, #434 release in four steps) are still open too. Live status of every PR
How big is the cliff, really?
Our tracker counts about 16,450 XBT locked so far, heading for roughly 20,000 by block 979,920. At this week's pace of about 3,200 XBT a day, that's roughly five days of trading on every exchange combined. What the order books can absorb
One caveat from the #476 write-up: default relay policy already holds each coinbase to 6,480 confirmations, "so in practice that release is only reachable by miners including the spends directly in their own blocks." In other words, the coins become spendable under consensus at 979,920, but most nodes won't relay those spends right away. How much moves on day one depends on what miners do.
What to watch
- A merge before block 979,919. Nothing above is merged. Without a release, the current rule simply ends at 979,920.
- A delay. Chris Guida's suggestion: push #468's activation back if review isn't done.
- A combined PR. #468 plus one of the cliff fixes, if the retroactive argument settles.
Our take
Ten days ago the question was whether to extend the lock at all. Now there are more than half a dozen open proposals and no merge, with eight days to go. The retroactive objection is a real principle, not a stall tactic, and it deserves a straight answer. But the clock doesn't care. If nothing ships, the unlock happens by default. We'd rather see a decision made on purpose.
Live Knots trackerUnlock countdown
Sources: Bitcoin Knots PRs #468, #469, #476 to #480 and their review threads, Oct 22 to 23, 2026; xbt.live unlock tracker. Quotes are verbatim and trimmed for length. "Our take" is xbt.live's opinion. Not financial advice.
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