Bitcoin official maintainer Cøbra: Knots may replace Core as the reference software for running Bitcoin network nodes.

Golden Finance reports that Cøbra, a long-term maintainer of the Bitcoin official site Bitcoin.org, stated that Knots may replace Core as the reference software for running Bitcoin network nodes. Earlier this year, most senior developers of Bitcoin Core decided to make significant modifications to OPRETURN (a widely used Bitcoin script tool for storing arbitrary data on-chain) in October 2025. If nodes upgrade the software from the current Bitcoin Core version 29 to version 30, the new default settings in the Core software will accept and forward a large amount of data unrelated to on-chain Bitcoin (BTC) transfers. According to Core developers, increasing the data carrier limit of OPRETURN can modernize the data storage role of the memory pool and keep it in line with the consensus rules of the Bitcoin ledger. In the view of Knots (a fork of the Core software with differing opinions), nodes should by default filter out most arbitrary data to prevent such behavior from occupying valuable Bitcoin block space.