A proposal to change Bitcoin’s consensus rules has split developers, miners, companies, and users over how the network should evolve and who has the authority to shape that path.
At the center of the dispute is Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110, or BIP-110. If adopted, the proposal would temporarily restrict several methods used to embed arbitrary data in Bitcoin transactions.
Supporters say that would cut blockchain spam and push Bitcoin back toward its role as money. Critics say it would reject some fee-paying transactions that are valid today and could create the conditions for a chain split.
What BIP-110 would change
Bitcoin transactions can carry more than payments. Through transaction scripts and witness data, they can also include text, images, token metadata, and other information.
BIP-110 is structured as a soft fork. It would tighten Bitcoin’s consensus rules by restricting several techniques used to insert that data. The proposal would limit most new transaction outputs to 34 bytes, restore an 83-byte cap for OP_RETURN outputs, limit certain witness elements to 256 bytes, and temporarily restrict several Taproot features commonly used for inscriptions. The article describes inscriptions as Bitcoin’s equivalent of NFTs and similar assets seen on networks such as Ethereum and Solana.
Opponents argue that BIP-110 would invalidate transactions that are currently accepted under Bitcoin’s consensus rules and establish a precedent for future protocol changes. In a February blog post, Casa Chief Security Officer Jameson Lopp said the proposal would weaken two of Bitcoin’s defining properties: censorship resistance and predictability.
“Bitcoin's strength lies in its censorship resistance and predictability,” Lopp wrote. “BIP-110 signals that the protocol can be altered to censor subjectively ‘undesirable’ transactions, eroding its image as permissionless programmable money.”
The proposal’s mandatory signaling period begins in August. According to BIP-110’s monitoring dashboard, only 1% of miners have shown support so far.
High-profile reactions across the ecosystem
The argument has pulled in Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr, Blockstream CEO Adam Back, Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, Casa Chief Security Officer Jameson Lopp, and Bitcoin advocate Samson Mow.
Saylor wrote on X, “There are 110 things more dangerous to Bitcoin than spam. BIP 110 turns a spam dispute into a consensus change that would invalidate some currently valid, fee-paying transactions. That precedent is the danger. We should save our energy for threats that really matter.”
Back argued that Bitcoin’s decentralized design does not allow one group of users to impose its preferences on everyone else, and that the network’s technical consensus process is deliberately hard to change. Supporters of the proposal are free to build their own fork, he said, but “Bitcoin won't be joining it.”
He also wrote on X: “Now the tough pill, which is unfortunately true. If you won't listen to reason, educate yourself, learn, the same radical freedom applies to you: your permissionless recourse is to club together and create a fork.”
The fight began with Ordinals
The current clash dates back to early 2023, when Bitcoin developer Casey Rodarmor launched Ordinals, a protocol that lets users inscribe images, text, video, and other digital content directly onto individual satoshis, the smallest unit of Bitcoin.
Ordinals rely on features introduced through Bitcoin’s SegWit and Taproot upgrades, allowing NFT-like assets to exist directly on the Bitcoin blockchain.
As Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens gained traction, demand for block space rose and transaction fees climbed with it. Supporters say the added fees created an extra source of miner revenue and improved Bitcoin’s long-term security model.
Critics, including Dashjr, have taken the opposite view. They argue that inscriptions exploit the Bitcoin network and amount to spam rather than legitimate financial activity.
Mow calls for broad agreement before protocol changes
In an essay posted to X on Tuesday under the title The Bitcoin Alliance, Samson Mow said Bitcoin participants should think of themselves as an alliance instead of a community, with developers, miners, companies, educators, and users each contributing in different ways.
“During the Blocksize War, there was never this ‘if you're not with us, you're against us’ mentality on our side,” he wrote. “The small block camp never had to coerce anyone to join. We just all ‘got it’ and were confident in our position.”
The article notes that the Blocksize Wars, fought from 2015 to 2017, focused on whether Bitcoin should raise its 1 MB block size limit so more transactions could fit into each block. The small-block side ultimately prevailed. Big-block supporters later forked away to create Bitcoin Cash in 2017 and Bitcoin SV in 2018.
Mow said he shares concerns about blockchain spam but opposes BIP-110 because, in his view, protocol changes require broad consensus. He also criticized Bitcoin Core developers over how they handled recent OP_RETURN policy changes, saying both sides helped intensify the conflict.
“The way they handled the OP_RETURN change was full of stupid mistakes, from banning people on GitHub to the ninja ACKs,” he wrote. “Any normal person could have predicted the reaction from the plebs. People store their time and value in Bitcoin. Anything that appears to threaten that will get people up in arms.”