Bitcoin Knots
A long-running variant of Bitcoin Core with stricter defaults and extra options.
In plain words
Bitcoin Knots is Bitcoin Core with extra settings. Same rules, same coin, same blocks — but stricter about which unconfirmed transactions it will pass along, filtering out things like data-stuffing "spam." Developer Luke Dashjr has maintained it since 2011. Running Knots is a choice of manners, not a new currency: Knots nodes and Core nodes agree on every block.
Why it matters
- Proof you can disagree on policy without splitting the network.
- Its popularity jumps whenever the filtering debate flares up.
- Same blocks, different manners: what a node relays is not what a block may contain.
Numbers that matter
- 2011 — maintained continuously since.
Not to be confused with
- A hard fork — Knots doesn't change what makes a block valid; altcoin forks do.
Go deeper
Updated 2026-07-29