Bitcoin BLAKE2b, the minority chain that forked from Bitcoin on August 8, 2026, will lock newly mined coins for 45 days under a change its developers say targets miners they accuse of misusing the young network. The rule takes effect at block 973440, expected around September 22.

Fork born from BIP-110's collapse

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 nearly killed the chain on day one: in its first 22 days, miners produced only about eight blocks before mining came to a standstill. The chain recovered after developers switched in a BLAKE2b hash function, reset the difficulty, and shrank the block size. Listings on small venues followed.

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

Pull request #419 extends coinbase maturity

The lockup is contained in Bitcoin Knots pull request #419, "Long coinbase maturity," opened by Luke Dashjr on September 15 and merged on September 21, according to the GitHub record.

Bitcoin miners can normally spend their rewards after 100 confirmations. The branch extends that period to 45 days, with enforcement running from block 973440 to block 979920 — a 6,480-block span, the equivalent of 45 days at the ten-minute block interval. In effect, rewards from blocks mined in that window would sit locked for 45 days before miners could spend or sell them.

Dashjr described the change as the first of three steps. The maturity window would later grow to a full year, and near the end of that year, blocks produced by non-miners would forfeit their rewards if consensus is reached — a progression that would push miners' access to newly issued rewards from roughly a day to a year.

Release notes on the branch accuse "apathetic BLAKE2b incumbents" of abusing the chain through "blind hashing instead of mining."

Dashjr accuses pools of "attacking" the network

The freeze responds to what gave BTCB2 its price: value attracted hashpower. Dashjr accused some pools of growing too large and "attacking" the network as it attempts to stabilize.

Reviewers raised 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. With enforcement due around September 22, hashrate adoption ahead of that block determines whether the rule binds network-wide or produces the split reviewers flagged.

That warning echoes the split-into-competing-coins scenario Cryptopolitan reported in July, when BIP-110 was still live. BIP-110, the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork, was authored by Dathon Ohm in December 2025 but failed to win support. In early July, Nakamoto founder David Bailey announced it was dead, and Cryptopolitan reported it was backed by less than 10% of nodes by February, with no top-20 mining pools among its supporters.

Exchange backing

Neoxa, one of the few exchanges listing the asset, said on Sunday that it will support the upcoming soft fork for XBT. The exchange told users mining to its platform that coinbase maturity "will increase when the soft fork goes live," according to a post on X. For miners routing payouts there, rewards would stay locked for the full 45 days once the soft fork activates.