XBT's lock fight, one week out: rough consensus, no decision
With about 1,100 blocks to go, roughly a week, there is rough consensus that XBT should keep a longer coinbase lock, and one proposal clearly leads: the 180-day rolling lock, #468. But nothing is merged, Knots maintainer Luke Dashjr has posted a Concept NACK, and there's no agreement on the one thing that decides what happens next week: the 16,788 XBT already locked.
Where each proposal stands
| PR | What it does | Support (as of Oct 24) |
|---|---|---|
| #468 | 180-day rolling lock on rewards mined from block 979,919 until RDTS expires (Sept 1, 2027). Coins already locked unlock on schedule. | Leads. Approving reviews from jasonsopko, kwsantiago, chrisguida and Ari4ka. New Concept ACKs since Friday. Concept NACK from Luke Dashjr. |
| #480 | Makes today's 45-day rolling lock permanent. No cliff, because the rule never ends. | Opened Thursday night. Tested ACK from geobees after five rounds of fixes, one Concept ACK, one Concept NACK. |
| #476 | 1-year rolling lock on every reward from 973,440, one block's reward unlocking per block. Not tied to RDTS. | Tested ACK from Kilombino, one Concept ACK. MarcanoFilms' mutation testing found a boundary bug that needs a fix. |
| #477, #478, #479 | Cliff fixes: keep the already-locked coins from unlocking all at once. | Split. Critics call them retroactive. #477 was added to #468 and then pulled back out. |
| #469 | 280-day lock, RDTS forever. | Closed by its author: "no consensus reached". |
Older options (#429, #434) and #467, which keeps the 45-day lock until RDTS expires, are still open with little new activity. Live status of every PR
What reviewers said this week
"ACK 8a4ca1b223. Both fixes look right, all tests pass, and each new test fails without its fix."
kwsantiago on #468, Oct 24
"Concept Re-ACK - Running DATUM mining tests with my Start9 Node."
NoFlames-bit on #468, Oct 24
"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)..."
Luke Dashjr on #468, Oct 23
"This same proposal was designed to be able to have its activation delayed without changing the design to allow more time for review, so I would be in favor of simply doing that, if consensus cannot be reached in time to activate at block 979919."
Chris Guida on #468, Oct 23
"Still concept ACK, though I'd prefer letting the current rule expire and planning a proper softfork timeline."
kwsantiago on #468, Oct 23
So where is consensus?
- On a longer lock: yes, roughly. Most reviewers and node runners who've weighed in want something longer than 100 blocks, and #468 has the most approvals of any proposal.
- On the coins already locked: no. Fixing the cliff means changing when already-mined coins unlock, and a vocal group calls that a retroactive rule change. That's why #468 dropped its fix.
- On timing: it's tight. Only the maintainer merges to Knots, and he's against #468. A soft fork that activates at 979,919 needs a release and node upgrades before then.
What's likely next week
- Most likely: nothing ships before block 979,920, and the 16,788 XBT (heading for about 20,000) become spendable on schedule, around Oct 31 to Nov 1. #468 could still activate later on a delayed height, as Chris Guida suggests.
- The dark horse: #480. It's short, it's tested, and making the current rule permanent sidesteps the retroactive argument. But it's two days old.
- The cushion: default relay policy still holds coinbase spends to 6,480 confirmations, so on day one most nodes won't relay spends of the newly unlocked coins. Miners can still include them directly. More on that
Also this week: a new spam fix
Chris Guida opened #481, which relays only input scripts with known shapes and counts unproven fields as data. That covers fake keys, hashes with no revealed preimage, and dead branches, so one rule would catch the tricks the narrower fixes miss. Why spam is the next fight
Our take
XBT has more consensus on the lock than it looks from the comment threads: almost nobody wants to go back to 100 blocks. What it lacks is a decision on the already-locked coins, and a process for making one in a week. We'd rather the unlock happen on schedule, cleanly, than see a rushed retroactive change. The bigger risk is pretending there's a plan when there isn't. Watch the tracker.
Live Knots trackerUnlock countdown
Sources: Bitcoin Knots PRs #468, #476 to #481 and their review threads, Oct 22 to 24, 2026; xbt.live lock tracker at block 978,807. Quotes are verbatim and trimmed for length. "Our take" is xbt.live's opinion. Not financial advice.
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