Bitcoin Core ships v31.0 as the Core-versus-Knots rift stays raw

Bitcoin Core, the reference software most of the Bitcoin network runs, announced the release of version 31.0 on April 20, 2026, per the project's own post on its @bitcoincoreorg account, pointing users to the binaries at bitcoincore.org and to release notes at bitcoincore.org/en/releases/31.0/. It is a new major release and follows v30.2.

The launch closed a testing cycle that ran through the spring. The project circulated release candidate 1 on March 17, 2026, release candidate 2 on April 3, and release candidate 4 on April 11 — each pointing to a work-in-progress release-notes draft on the bitcoin-core devwiki and to test binaries under bitcoincore.org. (No rc3 announcement appears in the public thread; that is a gap in the record, not evidence one didn't exist — release candidates that fail testing are routinely superseded.) Each candidate carried the same framing: a new major release following v30.2.

A necessary caveat up front. Bitcoin Core's own release and release-candidate announcements — mirrored through the Nitter front-end for X — establish firmly that v31.0 shipped, when, and how the test cycle ran. They do not include the contents of the release notes themselves. So the announcements don't tell you what changed in v31.0 — which consensus rules, policy defaults, wallet behavior, or performance work landed — because that detail lives in the release notes, not the launch posts, and we will not invent it. Anyone running a node should read the actual notes at the linked release page before upgrading.

What the threads actually show

Strip away the release mechanics and the most striking thing in the threads is the reaction. The Nitter captures of these announcements are dominated not by discussion of the software but by reaction imagery — a run of hostile and mocking GIFs ("Fuck You," "Embarrassed Shame," "No Nooo," a Brick Top "Now Fuck Off," and similar) appended to the release and candidate posts.

Recurring through those same threads are pointers to Bitcoin Knots — the alternative node implementation at github.com/bitcoinknots/bitcoin — including a "Run Knots" reaction and references to the Knots releases page. Knots is a downstream fork of Bitcoin Core maintained separately; as background widely reported through 2025 (not something the threads themselves spell out), it gained node operators during the dispute over Core relaxing its default relay limit on OP_RETURN data outputs — the fight over whether Bitcoin's base layer should carry arbitrary non-financial data. The presence of "Run Knots" messaging riding on top of Core's own release announcements is the clearest signal in the threads: a chunk of the audience is using Core's launch day to advertise the exit.

That is the whole verifiable story from the announcements: a dated major release, a normal-looking test cycle, and an announcement channel where a vocal segment is openly antagonistic and steering people to a competitor.

Key facts

• Bitcoin Core v31.0 released — April 20, 2026, download at bitcoincore.org, release notes at bitcoincore.org/en/releases/31.0/. (Source: Bitcoin Core / @bitcoincoreorg announcement, via Nitter.)
• It is a new major release following v30.2. (Source: Bitcoin Core rc announcements.)
• Release-candidate timeline: rc1 on March 17, 2026; rc2 on April 3, 2026; rc4 on April 11, 2026 — all with test binaries under bitcoincore.org/bin/bitcoin-core-31.0/ and a devwiki release-notes draft. (Source: Bitcoin Core rc announcements.)
• No rc3 announcement in the public thread — a gap in the record, not a confirmed omission. (Source: absence across the four posts.)
• Announcement threads reference Bitcoin Knots (github.com/bitcoinknots/bitcoin) and carry a "Run Knots" reaction plus a run of hostile GIFs. (Source: ALT-text of reaction media in the captured Nitter threads.)
• The release-notes contents are not in the announcement posts and are not reproduced here.

The real-world read

What the announcements don't contain is as telling as what they do. Bitcoin Core's own posts are terse and procedural — version number, download link, notes link. That is normal for infrastructure software and not a criticism. The noise is entirely in the surrounding reactions, and that noise is the story.

Treat the reaction GIFs for what they are: anonymous, unattributable sentiment scraped from a social thread, not a survey, not a vote, and not a measure of how many operators actually upgraded or defected. We can report that the captured threads are hostile and Knots-promoting; we cannot responsibly extrapolate that into a claim about network-wide node share, and neither should anyone else. If someone tells you "everyone's moving to Knots" on the strength of a meme reply, that's marketing for the fork, not data.

The Knots pitch is itself an interested party. Knots is a rival implementation with its own maintainers and advocates, and appending "Run Knots" to a competitor's release announcement is a promotional act — the software equivalent of leafleting outside a rival's shop. It should be read with the same skepticism as any other partisan pitch, in either direction: Core boosters dismissing all of it as trolling are equally motivated. Reception theater is not a technical audit.

The genuinely useful skeptical point is what's missing from the public conversation these threads represent: an actual accounting of what v31.0 changes and why. The heat is all social; the substance — the release notes — is one click away and conspicuously absent from the shouting. For a network whose entire security model rests on operators understanding what they run, a launch day dominated by reaction imagery rather than review of the changes is the part worth flagging.

Opinion, and whose

There are, notably, no named, attributable opinions or forecasts in these threads — no analyst, developer, or maintainer is quoted taking a position. The only "views" present are anonymous reaction GIFs and unsigned "Run Knots" messaging, which we decline to launder into named commentary by attaching pundits who didn't speak here. The pro-Knots sentiment is real but sourceless in these threads; the pro-Core case isn't argued in them at all. That absence is the honest state of the public record.

Sources

• Bitcoin Core (@bitcoincoreorg), via Nitter — v31.0 release announcement, April 20, 2026. Primary announcement for the release date, download, and release-notes link. The account is announcing its own software (self-source for the fact of release); surrounding reaction media is third-party.
• Bitcoin Core (@bitcoincoreorg), via Nitter — v31.0rc4, April 11, 2026. Established the "new major release following v30.2" framing and the rc4 test binaries.
• Bitcoin Core (@bitcoincoreorg), via Nitter — v31.0rc2, April 3, 2026. rc2 test binaries and release-notes draft.
• Bitcoin Core (@bitcoincoreorg), via Nitter — v31.0rc1, March 17, 2026. rc1 test binaries and release-notes draft.
• Reaction media (ALT-text) in the above threads — anonymous, unattributable; used only to characterize thread sentiment and the presence of Bitcoin Knots promotion, not as evidence of adoption. Not marketing in the paid sense, but the "Run Knots" content functions as advocacy for a rival implementation and is treated as such.

This is news coverage, not financial or technical advice; if you run a node, read the official v31.0 release notes before upgrading.