“OP_NOTEQUAL is disabled because it would be too easy to say something like n != 1 and have some wiseguy pass in 1 with extra zero bytes after it (numerically, 0x01 == 0x0001 == 0x000001).”
— Satoshi Nakamoto — script.cpp:494
This is not 000000000019d668…. JAN09-X mints its own genesis and starts from zero. It inherits no balances, no history and no coins, and its units are not historical satoshis. What it inherits is a rule set.
| denomination | COIN = 100,000,000 — the satoshi is genesis-born | main.h:18 |
|---|---|---|
| subsidy | 50 coins | main.cpp:677 |
| halving | every 210,000 blocks | main.cpp:680 |
| block spacing | 600 s — 10 minutes | main.cpp |
| proof-of-work | compact mantissa/exponent target | main.h |
| coinbase value | must be ≤ subsidy + fees — > rejects | main.cpp:739 |
Frozen and source-anchored in rules_jan09.json — every value carries the line it came from.
This is the single deliberate departure, and it is disclosed with the reason it was fenced off. Satoshi’s own comment survives beside the change, and the test suite reproduces the footgun rather than hiding it: 0x01 OP_NOTEQUAL 0x0001 is true — byte-unequal — even though numerically 1 = 1. That is the honest face of “nothing disabled”: the full expressive power is available, and the hazard is preserved next to it.
A mainnet-framed message is refused. The isolation is not a policy or a promise — it is the wire format. JAN09-X cannot talk to Bitcoin, to NOV08-X, or to any historical chain, and no configuration mistake can make it.
# join it — one command, no setup docker run --rm -v xnode-data:/data ghcr.io/original-bitcoin-laboratory/xnode # or from source python -m netnode --chain jan09x --datadir ./data-jan09 --connect seed.bitcoin-lab.org:18009
Images published from 15 Aug 2026 are signed — how to check with cosign. Earlier tags are not; that gap is stated, not back-dated.
Your node mints the genesis itself and re-validates every block — live status · explorer · the invitation
What “MODEL” means, and why it is stated first. JAN09-X is a reconstruction of a rule set, executed by the laboratory’s own engines in Python — not Satoshi’s binary running. That is a weaker class of evidence than Bitcoin, which runs the January 2009 client itself, and weaker than the two-node witness, which runs it twice. The laboratory does not flatten those three into one word. A model can be wrong in ways a binary cannot, and saying so is the point.
It is not the historical chain, and not “true Bitcoin.” Its genesis is its own, its units are not historical satoshis, and it inherits no balances. It is a new experimental descendant, released as a candidate — a Bitcoin, not the Bitcoin, exactly as its sibling NOV08-X is. No chain on this site is privileged over another.
Paired with NOV08-X, it answers a counterfactual from both ends: what the November 2008 design and the January 2009 release each become when completed with nothing disabled. Neither is recovered history. Both are stated as experiments.
NOT money. No premine, no sale, no market, no value assigned, no promises. The 50-coin outputs are 50 of nothing.