Bitcoin BLAKE2b fork moves to freeze new mining rewards for 45 days

The minority chain, Bitcoin BLAKE2b, was forked from Bitcoin on August 8, 2026. The developers plan to lock newly mined coins for 45 days.

They go after miners that they say are misusing the young network. The change goes into effect at block 973440, around September 22.

Knots pull request #419 locks Coinbase coins until block 979920

Bitcoin BLAKE2b grew out of the BIP-110 camp and Bitcoin Knots advocates who sought to remove large non-monetary data from Bitcoin. That proposal never gained consensus, and the group forked off at block height 961,632 in August.

The split inherited Bitcoin’s mining difficulty, which almost killed it on day one. In the first 22 days, miners created only about eight blocks before the chain came to a standstill.

It came back when developers switched in a BLAKE2b hash function, reset the difficulty, and shrunk the block size. Then came listings in some small venues.

The token, traded as BTCB2 or XBT, soared to $1,799 in early September. Since then, it has lost 84% of its value and now trades between $270 and $315.

The lockup is available in Bitcoin Knots pull request #419, “Long coinbase maturity,” opened by Luke Dashjr on September 15. The GitHub record shows it was merged on September 21.

Bitcoin miners can spend their rewards after 100 confirmations. This branch extends the period to 45 days, with enforcement starting from block 973440 to block 979920.

Dashjr calls it the first of three steps. The maturity window would later grow to a full year. Near the end of that year, blocks made by non-miners would lose their rewards if consensus is reached.

Release notes on the branch accuse “apathetic BLAKE2b incumbents” of abusing the chain with “blind hashing instead of mining.”

Dashjr accuses pools of “attacking” the network

The freeze is a response to what gave BTCB2 a price. Value pulled in hashpower.

Dashjr accused some pools of becoming too large and “attacking” the network as it tries to stabilize.

The pull request reviewers had their own concerns. One warned on September 18 that a node running the new rules without the majority of hashrate behind it would fork off at enforcement.

A release candidate carrying the change has since shipped.

The warning reflects the same split-into-competing-coins scenario that Cryptopolitan reported in July when BIP-110 was still live.

BIP-110, the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork, was authored by Dathon Ohm in December of 2025. It could not win support and collapsed.

In early July, Nakamoto founder David Bailey announced it to be dead. Cryptopolitan reports it was backed by less than 10% of nodes by February and no top 20 mining pools.