There’s growing tension in the Bitcoin developer community between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots. Bitcoin Core is the main implementation most nodes use. Its developers are pushing to remove the 80-byte limit on OP_RETURN, a field that lets users embed arbitrary data in transactions. They argue that Bitcoin should be neutral and not restrict valid use cases like Ordinals, RGB, or timestamping data.

Bitcoin Knots, maintained by Luke Dashjr, is a fork of Core with stricter policies. It filters out certain transactions, including large OP_RETURNs, spammy scripts, or low-fee data that don’t contribute to Bitcoin’s monetary role. These filters are designed to protect node operators from unnecessary resource usage and prevent blockchain bloat.