Knots banlist updated September 5, 2025

Knots node address list is sourced from: https://bitnodes.io/api/v1/snapshots/latest/

I2P and previously known nodes were added manually. Feel free to submit a PR for any missing nodes.

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To apply this banlist to your node:

1. Stop your Bitcoin node.
2. Navigate to your main Bitcoin directory (where your bitcoin.conf file is).
3. Save and copy the banlist.json file from this repository to your Bitcoin directory.
4. Start your Bitcoin node.

Caveat: Bitcoin nodes handle Tor connections in such a way that will still allow Knots nodes to connect to your node as inbound peers. To prevent this set the following flags in your bitcoin.conf file: listenonion=0 and i2pacceptincoming=1

Note: This banlist file will overwrite any existing banlist file in your Bitcoin directory. If you already have a banlist file, simply copy its contents to this new one.

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Why would I want to ban Knots nodes?

By default, Knots nodes implement a highly restrictive relay policy that attempts to prevent specific valid transactions from propagating through the Bitcoin network. This means that if your node is connected to a majority of Knots nodes, it will hinder your node’s ability to estimate fees properly and increase the time it takes for your node to receive new blocks

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Build Your Own:

If you would like to build your own banlist.json based on the bitnodes.io API, you can run the provided knotsban.py script. The script will fetch all current Knots nodes from bitnodes.io and output a banlist.json file.

Note: bitnodes.io does not list I2P Knots nodes, so any manually generated lists will not include them.

To mitigate this, use knownknots.txt alongside the knotsban.py script. The script will compare the list of addresses in knownknots.txt and output a banlist.json file containing all the previously known addresses combined with any new ones found by the bitnodes API.