**[Bitcoin.org Maintainer Cøbra: Knots May Replace Core as the Reference Software for Running Bitcoin Network Nodes]** Golden Finance reports that Cøbra, the long-time maintainer of the Bitcoin.org website, stated that Knots might replace Core as the reference software for running Bitcoin network nodes. Earlier this year, most senior developers of Bitcoin Core decided to implement significant changes to OP_RETURN (a Bitcoin script tool widely used for storing arbitrary data on the blockchain) by October 2025. If nodes upgrade their software from the current Bitcoin Core version 29 to version 30, the new default settings in the Core software will accept and relay a large amount of data unrelated to on-chain Bitcoin (BTC) transfers. From the perspective of Core developers, increasing the data carrier limit of OP_RETURN could modernize the data storage role of the memory pool and align it with the consensus rules of the Bitcoin ledger. However, Knots (a fork of the Core software with differing opinions) believes that nodes should, by default, filter out most arbitrary data to prevent such behavior from consuming Bitcoin's valuable block space.