This is amazing, thank you goosnarrggh!
The dtbo-file works for me exactly as described. My armbian is booting again and you saved me from completly giving up on the bananapi.
If it helps at all to narrow down where the issue comes from: The current (and some earlier) minimal image of armbian worked for me initally, but after installing and updating some packages (including a rebuild of initramfs), I consistently ran into the freeze at "Scanning for btrfs filesystems".