Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor published a lengthy argument on July 18 opposing Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-110, laying out his case point by point. The document, titled "110 Reasons Why BIP 110 Is a Bad Idea," frames the proposal as a governance risk that outweighs the spam problem it is trying to solve.
Saylor argued that changing consensus rules to filter specific categories of data would open the door to future restrictions on privacy tools, stablecoin settlement, and other applications.
BIP-110 faces an August signaling test
Under the current timetable, BIP-110 is expected to enter its mandatory signaling phase around Aug. 7 and become effective on Sept. 1. Miner signaling support was only 0.86% as of mid-July, well below the 55% threshold required to lock in the soft fork.
If miners remain unmoved, the proposal is unlikely to pass in August.
BIP-110 would temporarily restrict several transaction types that can carry what its backers describe as non-payment data. Those technical paths have been used in recent years by inscription-based systems such as Ordinals and Runes to write images, text, and other non-payment content onto the Bitcoin blockchain.
What BIP-110 would restrict
The proposal would place limits on multiple channels, including:
- OP_RETURN outputs, capped at 83 bytes;
- most push payloads and witness items, capped at 256 bytes;
- undefined witness and Tapleaf versions;
- Taproot annex data;
- Taproot control blocks, capped at 257 bytes;
- and parts of Tapscript opcodes and branches.
Supporters, including some Bitcoin Core developers, say non-payment data has inflated demand for block space, increased the cost of running a full node, and diluted Bitcoin’s identity as electronic cash. Opponents answer that Bitcoin nodes are only supposed to verify whether a transaction follows the rules, not judge whether the content being recorded is worthy of inclusion.
Saylor calls it an "iatrogenic proposal"
In his essay, Saylor described BIP-110 as a "Bitcoin iatrogenic proposal," borrowing a medical term for treatment that causes more harm than the condition itself.
His main argument is that Bitcoin’s competitive strength comes from a neutral and predictable base layer whose rules do not shift with politics. Once transaction validity starts to hinge on whether a use case is considered acceptable, he said, the same logic could later be applied to privacy tools, stablecoin settlement, or any other application that some group decides is unreasonable.
Saylor also warned that block subsidies are cut in half every four years, leaving miners increasingly dependent on fees to preserve mining incentives. If BIP-110 invalidates a category of transactions that currently pays fees and is valid under existing rules, he argued, miners would in effect lose part of a revenue stream.
The 55% threshold and the governance dispute
BIP-110 uses a 55% miner signaling threshold, far below the 95% level associated with the standard BIP 9 process. Saylor described that as a back door for soft-fork governance, saying a lower threshold for a politically charged rule change would turn future disputes into simple majoritarian contests and move Bitcoin away from its tradition of requiring near-unanimous consensus for protocol changes.
He pointed to Segregated Witness, or SegWit, and Taproot as historical soft forks that only activated after reaching 95% signaling. If BIP-110 were to pass at 55%, he said, some nodes might reject the new rules, while miners that do not follow them could continue packaging transactions the updated rules would treat as invalid, raising the risk of a chain split.
Support remains below 1%
As of mid-July, miner support for BIP-110 stood at 0.86%, leaving the proposal far from the 55% early lock-in threshold. Based on the current pace, it is close to certain that the proposal will fail to clear the bar in August if miner sentiment does not change.
Blockstream CEO Adam Back had already come out against BIP-110 earlier, using reasoning similar to Saylor’s: the rule change itself carries greater long-term risk than spam. The July 18 essay is Saylor’s most complete public statement on the issue so far and clarifies the position of Strategy, which the source described as the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder. The article said Strategy held about 840,000 BTC as of July 2026.
The dispute may continue after Sept. 1
Even if BIP-110 fails to reach the goal by Sept. 1, the debate is unlikely to end there. Supporters may introduce new variants with even lower thresholds or shift toward off-chain approaches, such as filtering at the mempool policy layer. Opponents, for their part, may treat Saylor’s essay as a key statement of the principle that the base layer should not be altered for content management and cite it in future arguments over similar changes.
At the center of the fight is a broader question for Bitcoin: whether consensus rules should be used to manage what kinds of content can be written to the chain.