Bitcoin Knots Nodes Surge 638% Amid Core Policy Disputes

Bitcoin Knots, initially released by developer Luke Dashjr in the early 2010s, has long been recognized as a more configurable and policy-agnostic alternative to Bitcoin Core. While most nodes traditionally rely on the Bitcoin Core client to support the Bitcoin network, Bitcoin Knots has seen a remarkable surge in popularity, growing by 638% since the start of the year. As of June 19, the number of nodes using Bitcoin Knots has jumped from 394 to 2,909, accounting for 13.24% of all nodes supporting the Bitcoin network. This significant growth, which began to accelerate in May, indicates a growing distrust among a substantial portion of Bitcoin’s infrastructure operators towards Core’s unilateral definition of Bitcoin’s limits.

This shift is not merely technical but also ideological. The last time node counts experienced such a dramatic change was in 2017, on the eve of the SegWit2x showdown. Disagreements over block size and miner power led to the network fracturing into Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. Now, another potential schism is forming, this time centered around the core principles of the protocol, which could significantly impact price stability and adoption by the end of the year.

Bitcoin Knots began as a power-user fork of Core, integrating patches, features, and policy tweaks that were too controversial or premature for mainline adoption. For most of its existence, it hovered between 50 and 200 active nodes, serving as a staging ground for conservative developers wary of Core’s influence. However, from March 2016 through early 2022, node counts barely breached 200. Even during the Ordinals surge in 2023, when BRC-20 tokens and Bitcoin-based inscriptions strained blockspace and sparked renewed debate over Bitcoin’s purpose, Knots only briefly crested above 1,000 nodes before dropping back. Then came late 2024, as murmurs of an OP_RETURN cleanup in Core began to circulate, couched in language about pruning, feed efficiency, and mempool hygiene, Knots adoption began to climb. By early 2025, it had tripled. By June 19, 2025, it stood at 2,909, with growth still accelerating.

Tensions escalated further on June 6, when Bitcoin Core developers published a statement signaling a shift toward a “minimally permissive” relay policy. The announcement avoided specific terms such as OP_RETURN or Ordinals, but its implications were clear. Under the new posture, Core clients may soon stop relaying non-standard transactions by default, even if those transactions are valid under Bitcoin’s consensus rules. Critics argue that this policy risks undermining Bitcoin’s neutrality by enforcing a subjective vision of what types of activity should be allowed on the network. Core’s proposed changes, slated for October 2025, include more restrictive handling of OP_RETURN, the opcode that enables arbitrary data to be embedded in Bitcoin transactions. While this opcode has historically been capped at 80 bytes and discouraged in practice, it has underpinned everything from token issuance via Omni and Counterparty to NFT-style Ordinals in recent years. Some developers argue that these transactions bloat the chain, crowd out financial activity, and should be deprioritized. Others say that selectively disabling or penalizing them violates Bitcoin’s principle of neutrality. If a transaction is valid by consensus rules and pays a competitive fee, it should be relayed and mined. Knots, notably, do not implement these policy-level filters unless explicitly configured. Its rise suggests that the non-neutrality narrative around Core is gaining traction. In other words, Bitcoin’s policy layer, which was once quietly dictated by a small circle of Core maintainers, is now being contested by nodes switching over to Knots in record numbers.

This is not yet a hard fork scenario, but it is inching closer. The 2017 SegWit upgrade reached a boiling point when divergent software choices became incompatible. If Core’s upcoming changes cause blocks or transactions to be rejected by non-Core clients, the stage is set for history to repeat. And with more than 13% of the network already running Knots, this is not just a protest vote but the beginning of a parallel consensus. When Bitcoin split into Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash on Aug. 1, 2017, markets responded with volatility but no collapse. Bitcoin (BTC) dropped approximately 5.6%, falling from about $2,875 on July 31 to $2,718 on the fork day. However, this dip proved short-lived. Throughout August, BTC surged nearly 49%, closing strong at around $4,050, and continued its meteoric rise to almost $20,000 by December 2017. Meanwhile, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) launched trading at approximately 0.0045 BTC (~$240) and skyrocketed to 0.283 BTC (~$1,500) before stabilizing in the $300-$500 range. Far from fracturing investor confidence, the fork solidified BTC’s dominance and gave dissenters an alternative in BCH. The stakes, this time, are higher. With Bitcoin ETFs, corporations’ stacking Bitcoin on their balance sheets and the market being potentially poised for blow-off tops in the foreseeable future, this schism could have more market risk than we have seen in the past. If Bitcoin Knots keeps its average growth run rate from May through October 2025, there will be over 5,000 nodes running the Knots client. That will equate to around 23% of the entire Bitcoin network. That level of adoption would mark the largest divergence from Bitcoin Core since the 2017 hard fork, and this time, the rebellion is already inside the house.