The XBT coinbase lock ends with a cliff, not a drip
The 45-day lock on new XBT mining rewards doesn't end with a slow drip. It ends with a cliff. At block 979,920, the consensus rule switches off and the network will accept spends of almost every locked reward at once, about 20,000 XBT. The slow, one-block-a-day unlock most people expect, including us, is only a relay policy on Bitcoin Knots nodes.
What the code says
We read the current Bitcoin Knots 29.x source. The long coinbase maturity is set by three heights on mainnet:
- Start: rewards from block 973,440 onward are covered.
- Enforce: blocks from 973,440 enforce the rule.
- Release: 979,920. The rule is only active for blocks below this height.
The required wait is the release height minus the start height, 6,480 blocks. But because the rule turns off at 979,920, no block from 979,920 onward checks it. From that block, consensus goes back to the normal 100-block maturity for every reward, including the ones mined during the window.
The practical effect: a reward mined at block 973,440 waits the full 6,480 blocks. A reward mined at block 979,000 waits only about 920. Every reward from the window that is at least 100 blocks old becomes spendable by consensus at the same block.
So where does the drip come from?
Knots also applies a 6,480-block rule to its mempool and wallet, and that one doesn't switch off. A Knots node won't relay a transaction that spends a reward younger than 6,480 blocks, and the Knots wallet keeps showing those coins as immature. Since about 85% of reachable XBT nodes enforce the lock, most normal broadcasts will still trickle out about one block of rewards at a time, roughly 450 XBT a day, until around block 986,400.
But that's policy, not consensus. Two ways around it:
- Pools mine their own spends. A pool can put a transaction spending its own rewards straight into a block it finds. Other nodes will accept that block.
- Other node software. Nodes that don't run the Knots policy may relay these spends to miners who'll include them.
The numbers
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Blocks in the lock window | 6,480 (973,440 to 979,919) |
| Locked subsidy, full window | about 20,250 XBT, about $14.6M at $723 |
| Already mined and locked | about 12,090 XBT (3,869 blocks, as of block 977,308) |
| Spendable by consensus at 979,920 | about 19,940 XBT (all but the last 100 blocks) |
| Blocks until the release | 2,612 |
| Estimated date | around Nov 1, after this weekend's difficulty jump slows blocks to about 10 minutes |
Why it matters
- For the market: the biggest possible wave of new miner supply is earlier and bigger than the 450-a-day model. Large pools are the ones able to move first. How much actually gets sold is up to them, and many miners hold.
- For the extension vote: anyone hoping to extend the lock has until block 979,920. After that, extending it can't re-lock rewards that consensus has already released. A proposed Knots change to extend maturity until RDTS expires (Sept 1, 2027) is still under discussion, and reviewers have flagged the same edge: rewards mined close to the end get a shorter lock.
- For small miners: if you mine through a pool, your payout timing depends on how your pool handles locked rewards. Our miner guide covers what to check.
A correction
Our earlier countdown story and the unlock page said locked rewards unlock one block at a time by consensus. That's how Knots nodes relay them, not what consensus requires. Both are updated.
Live unlock countdownMiner guide
Source: Bitcoin Knots 29.x chain parameters and validation code, checked Oct 15, 2026. Chain data via xbt.live as of block 977,308. Reporting only, not financial advice.
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