Bitcoin’s BIP editors removed Luke Dashjr from the role on Monday, two days after the BIP-110 soft fork he had championed split thousands of nodes onto a chain that has not produced a block since Aug. 8.
The BIPs repository does not have a written procedure for taking the role away. BIP 3, the document that governs the proposal process, lists the current editors and their duties, but says nothing about how editors are appointed or dismissed. Dashjr was removed by revoking his GitHub permissions and deleting a single line from that list.
Removal was executed through repository access changes
Bryan Bishop, one of the five remaining editors, confirmed the change on the Bitcoin Development Mailing List at 4:52 p.m. ET on Monday. He wrote: 「The individual known as Luke Dashjr is no longer a permissioned user on the BIP content repository.」
Jon Atack merged pull request #2248, a one-line deletion that removed Dashjr’s name and email from BIP 3. Atack wrote that he had 「verified that Luke no longer has editor/admin privileges in this repository.」
The remaining editors are Bishop, Atack, Erhardt, Olaoluwa Osuntokun, and Ruben Somsen.
Four grounds were cited in the motion
Erhardt, who goes by Murch, opened the motion at 2:53 p.m. ET on Sunday. He listed four reasons: conflict of interest, minimal contribution, championing a contentious fork, and a breakdown in coordination with the other editors.
Erhardt wrote: 「Luke was heavily involved in the creation and implementation of BIP110, the proposal that led to the fork. During that process, he also exercised his authority as a BIP Editor inconsistently with the established editorial process unfairly favoring the proposal he was involved in. For example, he attempted to assign a BIP number to the draft publicly on Twitter before the proposal had been discussed on the mailing list, and he merged a PR updating the BIP within minutes of the PR being opened.」
On the question of contribution, Erhardt gave a number. Since additional editors joined in April 2024, Dashjr had left 「fewer than 1% of the BIP Editor comments in the repository,」 and the BIP-110 merge was his first merge action since May 2024.
Dashjr said the accusations were false
Dashjr replied 49 minutes later in five sentences.
He wrote: 「These are false accusations. I have followed the BIP process consistently for years. Your novice opinions alone do not establish new processes.」 He added: 「You are the one who stopped communicating, not I. You are the one who should be removed.」
As of Monday evening, he had not publicly addressed the removal itself.
Supporters pointed to prior disputes and public statements
Support in the thread came from Osuntokun, fellow BIP editor, from Bitcoin Core contributors Matt Corallo, Antoine Poinsot, and Anthony Towns, and from Jonas Nick, a maintainer of the libsecp256k1 cryptographic library.
Osuntokun wrote that Dashjr 「used his position as a BIP editor to fast track the proposal anyway, assigning it a number out of band,」 and that the fork created 「a clear conflict of interest.」
Poinsot listed four earlier disputes with dated sources. One example was a 2021 pull request in which Dashjr, then the sole maintainer of the BIPs repository, stalled the inclusion of Taproot activation parameters he disagreed with. Dashjr has also been at the center of the dispute over Bitcoin Core’s OP_RETURN changes since last year, the fight that produced BIP-110.
Nick cited seven of Dashjr’s X posts: three saying BIP-110 「is Bitcoin,」 had consensus, and was certain to activate; three calling it 「zero risk」; and one calling Erhardt a liar. On-chain signaling never came close to activation. The proposal peaked at 2.53% of blocks in a difficulty period, far below the 55% it needed.
Anthony Towns opened his message with 「Very overdue,」 and wrote that a BIP editor 「actively promoting a minority fork as the real Bitcoin while lying about the risks of such an approach and calling everyone who disagrees with him a liar and/or a pedophile is completely untenable.」
Jameson Lopp, co-founder and chief security officer of self-custody firm Casa, said the case 「comes down to reputation」 and noted the lack of any governance policy. 「This isn't a democracy and I have no vote,」 he wrote. 「But it seems to me that if the other BIP Editors are uninterested in continuing to work with Luke, they are under no obligation to leave privileged access open for him to potentially abuse.」
The tally on the pull request was informal. It drew more than a dozen thumbs-up reactions and three comments reading 「ACK」 from SatsAndSports, jlopp, and caesrcd, which in the repository is shorthand for approval. Erhardt wrote: 「Looks like the Ayes had it.」
Some agreed with the outcome but objected to the speed
Bitcoin protocol developer Antoine Riard supported the outcome but objected to the pace.
Riard proposed that all existing editors state their positions publicly, that contributors to the repository be given a say, and that Dashjr receive 「at least 2 weeks or even a full month」 to answer the charges point by point, with a temporary suspension in the meantime. He also noted the timing: 「we're in the middle of the month of August, at a period where people can be in vacations.」
He also asked for BIP 3 to be amended to state that editors have 「an explicit duty of neutrality,」 and that they 「should not engage in the promotion of contentious fork, even under one of their other hats.」
The removal took about 26 hours. Ruben Somsen, the fifth remaining editor, did not post in the thread.
Michael Tidwell, who also backed the removal, raised a similar concern about process. He wrote to Dashjr: 「It would be better to step down yourself than get forced out through this informal process,」 while thanking him for 「the years of hard work.」
Dashjr said he was taking a sabbatical from Ocean
Four minutes before Bishop’s confirmation, Dashjr posted that he was stepping back from Ocean, where the pool’s site lists him as chairman and chief technology officer.
He wrote: 「I am taking a sabbatical from OCEAN as Chairman and CTO and will turn my immediate focus to working on Bitcoin and open-source projects to support Bitcoin. I believe this is the best use of my time and is in the best interests of Bitcoin and Bitcoin's long-term health.」
Ocean was the only pool that signaled for BIP-110 in the final period before the split. According to block data from mempool.space, all 51 signaling blocks between heights 959,616 and 961,631 came from Ocean. The pool has since returned its default stratum endpoint to non-BIP-110 work and has published nothing about Dashjr’s sabbatical.
The BIP-110 enforcing chain remains stalled
The chain enforcing BIP-110 is still stuck at height 961,633, where it stopped on Aug. 8. Roughnecks, the self-organized group that mined the fork’s only two blocks, acknowledged the stall on Monday while still describing the enforcing side as Bitcoin.
Bitcoin itself had passed height 961,925 at 22:02 UTC on Monday, leaving a gap of 292 blocks.
Signaling has dropped to zero. The bip110monitor.com dashboard, which reads block versions from mempool.space, showed no block setting bit 4 since the current difficulty period opened at height 961,632. In the previous period, signaling peaked at 51 blocks, or 2.53%. The proposal needs 55% in a single period.
Price action was largely unchanged
According to CoinGecko, Bitcoin traded at $64,002 late Monday, down 1.9% over 24 hours and up 0.8% on the week. The report said neither the fork nor Dashjr’s removal moved the price.
Dashjr remains the lead maintainer of Bitcoin Knots, the node implementation that shipped the BIP-110 rules in its 20260508 builds and stranded the nodes that installed them on the forked chain. Monday’s removal does not affect that role.