Bitcoin Core is losing ground in front of Knots, according to Coin Dance data.
The growth of Knots is due to a migration of Bitcoin Core for technical and philosophical reasons.
Coin Dance, a platform that summarizes the quantity and distribution of Bitcoin nodes, shows that Knots, the alternative customer to Bitcoin Core that has won traction in recent months, already supplies more than 2,200 nodes. This represents about 10% of the total nodes in Bitcoin.
According to Coin Dance, what updated his nodes count A few hours ago, at the time of writing there are 22,300 public nodes in operation.
According to the same metric portal, in June 2024 Knots, only 1.36% of the Bitcoin nodes ran. For its part, Bitcoin Core did the same with 98%. Now, however, the 2,200 Knots nodes correspond to more than 10% of the 22,300. And the 20,000 of Bitcoin Core, to just under 90%. These calculations confirm that Knots has absorbed about a tenth of Bitcoin Core users.
Despite the absorption of public nodes by Knots, Bitcon Core also continues to grow in adoption, housing almost 20,000 of them. However, its growth It is given at a lower rate than its alternative client and the only real competitor. As Cryptonotics reported, a considerable amount of users is migrating from Bitcoin Core to Knots, mainly for philosophical and political reasons.
Coin Dance recognizes the existence of other implementations of complete nodes, such as BTCD (written in the Galang language), Bitcore (node.js), Bcoin or Bitcoin UASF, among others. However, the number of nodes operating in these implementations is far from being significant in terms of adoption.
A summary of the debate between Bitcoin Core and Knots
As Cryptonotics reported, Bitcoin Knots is software created by Luke Dashjr, a developer widely recognized in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Dashjr is also known for promoting their own Bitcoin base protocols, guided by less conventional philosophical and techniques. Thus, it is also co -founder of the mining pool called Ocean, an initiative focused on BTC decentralized mining.
Dashjr has been a critical voice against Bitcoin Core, arguing that his permissiveness with the non -monetary uses of the network could compromise Bitcoin’s efficiency and decentralization.
Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots dive in what constitutes “spam” (irrelevant content with extensive diffusion).
Currently, some developers consider that Bitcoin Core prioritizes excess non -monetary transactions, and considers non -monetary data (such as ordinal inscriptions and op_return transactions) as valid forms of network use. Hence the elimination proposal in Bitcoin Core of the 83 -bytes limit in OP_RETURN transactions, and authorization in the past of multiple operations of this type.
Bitcoin Knots, meanwhile, implements aggressive filters against these inscriptions, seeking to optimize performancebut generating tensions in the community for its less consensual, collaborative approach, and for its rejection of multiple uses of the Bitcoin Network.
Ultimately, this technical discussion reflects a question that can be formulated in a simple way: Bitcoin should be only money or also a data registration system?
The confrontation declared between Knots and Bitcoin Core began around September of 2024. The definitive answer to the previous question remains in the collaborative process of construction. Meanwhile, the debate has degenerated in more direct attacks among different developers, as evidenced by certain posts in the social network X. for example, those of Eric Wallzard and Peter Todd.
