Original ｜Odaily Planet Daily

Author｜Golem

As the mandatory window period in August approaches, recent discussions about the BIP-110 proposal have become lively again.

BIP-110 was proposed by Dathon Ohm in December 2025 and received support from Bitcoin core developer Luke Dashjr. The proposal aims to limit arbitrary/non-monetary data in Bitcoin transactions over the next year, mainly targeting large data storage like Ordinals and Bitcoin NFTs, hoping to reduce "spam transactions" in the network and focus Bitcoin on its monetary function.

The proposal has been controversial since its inception, but data shows that BIP-110 is currently not supported by mainstream miners and nodes. The activation threshold for BIP-110 is 55%, but statistics indicate that current miner support is less than 1%, and out of 102,674 nodes in the network, only 15,035 nodes are willing to execute BIP-110, accounting for 14.64%.

Support Rate of Miners and Nodes for BIP-110

Generally, a proposal with such a low support rate cannot pass on the Bitcoin network, but the point of contention with BIP-110 is that even without consensus, nodes supporting BIP-110 will be forced to execute it. If BIP-110 does not reach the 55% activation threshold before the block height reaches 961632, it will enter the mandatory window period (block height 961632-963647). During this period, nodes running BIP-110 will reject non-compliant blocks, forcibly raising the pass rate to 100%, allowing BIP-110 to be forcibly activated at block height 965664.

According to the current block speed of the Bitcoin network, BIP-110 will enter the mandatory window period in early August, which means that although BIP-110 is a soft fork proposal, the Bitcoin network will also experience a chain fork (a minority chain supporting BIP-110 and the main chain not supporting BIP-110).

Ongoing Controversy over BIP-110

According to Bitcoin's "longest chain principle," only when the actual miner computing power supporting BIP-100 constitutes the majority (>50%) can they become the longest chain, and the entire network will unify to the new rules, i.e., a successful soft fork. Therefore, although the outcome of BIP-110 being forcibly activated is certain, whether it can be sustained ultimately depends on consensus; otherwise, BIP-110 may meet the same fate as the vast majority of historical Bitcoin soft forks: natural death.

Supporters: BIP-110 is not a transformation, but a denial of transformation

The main representatives of the supporters of BIP-110 are Luke Dashjr and his mining pool Ocean. Luke Dashjr has been a radical figure opposing BRC-20 and inscriptions in the Bitcoin developer community for many years, and he has provided draft suggestions for the BIP-110 proposal.

Luke Dashjr is regarded as a representative of Bitcoin fundamentalism who does not want to see Bitcoin block space used for anything other than Bitcoin transfers. The BIP-110 proposal views the inscriptions that appeared in 2022 as a form of "attack on Bitcoin" because allowing arbitrary data to be embedded in Bitcoin transactions would create a significant and unnecessary burden on nodes and occupy a large amount of block space, forcing monetary transactions to increase bidding thresholds in order to be included in blocks, thereby encroaching on Bitcoin's monetary use.

Therefore, Luke Dashjr stated on the X platform that BIP-110 is not a transformation, but a denial of transformation. When facing opponents of BIP-110, he also demonstrated a spirit of sophistry, claiming on one hand that BIP-110 has no hostility and does not force anyone to accept it, while on the other hand stating that those who oppose BIP-110 are the true attackers of Bitcoin.

Moreover, although the current voting rate among miners supporting BIP-110 is very low (1%), Luke Dashjr remains optimistic that the voting rate directly opposing BIP-110 is almost 0, suggesting that miners do not make decisions and will follow once BIP-110 is activated.

In reality, as of now, the only publicly supporting mining pool for BIP-110 is Ocean, owned by Luke Dashjr. F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun publicly stated in February that he would never support BIP-110, and Luke Dashjr confidently replied under his post, "Then you will mine invalid blocks and lose all rewards."

According to miningradar data, F2Pool is the third-largest Bitcoin mining pool in the network, accounting for 13.6% of the computing power; while Ocean currently has a computing power of only 24.6EH/S, accounting for 2.6% of the network's total computing power.

Bitcoin Mining Pool Rankings

If Ocean ultimately becomes the only mining pool supporting the fork, they can only produce 3-5 blocks per day, and such work efficiency and block production speed cannot establish itself as the "longest chain" on the Bitcoin network.

Opponents: BIP-110 does not solve problems, while creating more new problems

The opposition to the BIP-110 proposal does not only focus on whether it will succeed after activation, but criticizes that it cannot solve the "spam transaction" issue existing in the Bitcoin network while also creating many potential new problems. In short, the reason the opposition continues to strongly oppose is out of concern for various unintended consequences, rather than any attachment to Ordinals or inscriptions. Representative figures of the opposition include crypto punk pioneer Adam Back, Bitcoin core developer Jameson Lopp, and Strategy founder Michael Saylor.

Firstly, the opposition believes that BIP-110 cannot fully solve the "spam transaction" problem faced by the Bitcoin network, and the author of the BIP-110 proposal also admits it can only temporarily alleviate the issue. Jameson Lopp believes that Bitcoin's block size limit and the bidding market for block space have alleviated the spam transaction problem to some extent, but the reason Bitcoin has always been a target for various spam transaction attacks is that almost no one genuinely uses the Bitcoin network and transaction fees have remained low, so they cannot form fees high enough to suppress most spam transactions.

Additionally, BIP-110 would stifle future innovations for Bitcoin, and the proposal also acknowledges that its restrictions on Taproot hinder the implementation of higher functions or complex contracts like BitVM on the Bitcoin network. Although BIP-110 is described as a temporary restriction for a year, Jameson Lopp believes this is merely a delaying tactic by Luke Dashjr, and if these restrictions severely impede future upgrades of Bitcoin, it could lead to a hard fork rather than a soft fork.

Adam Back focuses more on Bitcoin's censorship resistance and decentralization spirit. He argues that BIP-110 would subjectively censor transactions within blocks, which fundamentally aims to regulate others, contrary to the neutrality and anti-censorship spirit the Bitcoin network has maintained since its inception, which is a dangerous step toward centralization and control for Bitcoin. Adam Back’s rejection of Bitcoin extremism using Bitcoin fundamentalism to negate transformations could be seen as "magic defeating magic."

Michael Saylor refers to BIP-110 as the "Bitcoin Iatrogenic Proposal," hinting that this "treatment plan" itself would harm Bitcoin rather than address existing problems.

Moreover, Michael Saylor believes that if BIP-110 becomes consensus, then some effective paid transactions will also become invalid, and establishing this precedent for censorship is the real danger.

One of the most concerning serious consequences for the opposition is that after BIP-110 is activated, it may split the Bitcoin chain ecosystem. Eventually, there would be two competing chains vying for the status of "true Bitcoin," and in such situations, the uncertain outcomes of the fork might create Bitcoin double-spend risks. Even if double-spends are avoided, if BIP-110 eventually evolves into a new chain, it would also split Bitcoin's developer resources, computing power resources, and monetary consensus.

The opposition believes that BIP-110 is attempting to solve a cultural problem with a technical means, which will ultimately lead to more unpredictable issues.

Despite their concerns, the opponents are quite confident about the failure of BIP-110. Jameson Lopp bet on BIP-110 back in February with a minimum stake of 1 BTC, and to date, no supporters of BIP-110 have publicly accepted the wager.

Jameson Lopp's Bet Invitation to BIP-110 Supporters

On the prediction market Predyx, the probability of "BIP-110 being activated and enforced on Bitcoin from September 1 to 7, 2026" stands at 10%, with the condition for the "Yes" settlement being that the BIP-110 chain must become the "longest chain" accepted by most nodes.

What Will Happen After BIP-110 is Activated?

We can now make some hypothetical scenarios regarding what might happen when BIP-110 is ultimately forcibly activated at block height 965664 (end of August to early September).

The first scenario, as described above, is that upon reaching the activation height, BIP-110 nodes refuse the main chain blocks, but there are not enough miners producing new blocks that comply with BIP-110 rules, resulting in a very slow block production rate and ultimately stopping block production, thus no longer "growing."

The second scenario is that a certain proportion of miners support BIP-110. Supporters of BIP-110 believe they have an "asymmetrical advantage" because the rules of BIP-110 are stricter; thus, while BIP-110 nodes will reject blocks containing non-compliant data (such as inscriptions), non-BIP-110 nodes (mainstream Core nodes) will view blocks created by BIP-110 nodes as valid.

Moreover, currently in the Bitcoin block space, the proportion of inscription transactions has dropped to 5%, with over 95% still being traditional Bitcoin transfer transactions, meaning BIP-110 nodes can still receive a large number of mainstream blocks. This is why Luke Dashjr believes BIP-110 will ultimately become the "longest chain" and unify the network.

Proportions of Different Transaction Types in Bitcoin Block Space

The third scenario is that a certain proportion of miners support BIP-110, but the computing power still cannot surpass that of the existing majority chain. Generally, miners are highly rational because their machines start consuming electricity once they are powered on. In the competition between two chains, miners will weigh the pros and cons, and miners on the BIP-110 chain will more easily abandon sunk costs (mining rewards on the minority chain) to join the majority chain because the minority chain not only lags in chain length but also accumulates fewer Bitcoin rewards than the majority chain. This would ultimately revert to the first scenario.