The Bitcoin ecosystem is currently locked in its most intense protocol-level civil war since the infamous Blocksize Wars of a decade ago [cite: Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor took to social media on Sunday to detail his “110 reasons” why a proposed temporary fork to limit non-monetary transactions on the Bitcoin network, or BIP-110, is a bad idea]. BIP-110 is one of the more notable protocol-level disputes in the Bitcoin development community since the Blocksize Wars between 2015 and 2017, when ecosystem participants debated whether it was worth risking a chain split to raise the block size limit for scalability. At the center of the crossfire is Michael Saylor, the executive chairman of Strategy and the man steering the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin treasury [cite: Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor took to social media on Sunday to detail his “110 reasons” why a proposed temporary fork to limit non-monetary transactions on the Bitcoin network, or BIP-110, is a bad idea., In a roughly 3,700-word post on X.com, the man in control of the largest Bitcoin (BTC) corporate treasury made a case for what he said are “neutral rules, hard consensus, open markets, and permissionless innovation.”
In a massive, 3,700-word critique posted on social media, Saylor laid out “110 reasons” why a controversial new proposal called BIP-110 is a fundamentally dangerous idea [cite: Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor took to social media on Sunday to detail his “110 reasons” why a proposed temporary fork to limit non-monetary transactions on the Bitcoin network, or BIP-110, is a bad idea., In a roughly 3,700-word post on X.com, the man in control of the largest Bitcoin (BTC) corporate treasury made a case for what he said are “neutral rules, hard consensus, open markets, and permissionless innovation.” While Saylor claims he respects the intentions of the developers behind the bill, he strongly warns that their proposed cure is far worse than the disease [cite: “Many Bitcoiners I respect support BIP 110. They want to keep validation accessible, protect node operators from unwanted costs and content, preserve affordable payments, and keep Bitcoin focused on sound money rather than general-purpose data storage. Those are serious concerns. I share the objectives. I disagree about the remedy,” Saylor said. He added.
What is BIP-110 and Why Does it Exist?
Bitcoin Improvement Proposal-110 (BIP-110) was originally introduced back in December 2025. Its core objective is simple: purge the blockchain of “spam.”
Specifically, the proposal seeks to implement a temporary, one-year fork that limits non-monetary transactions on the network [cite: Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor took to social media on Sunday to detail his “110 reasons” why a proposed temporary fork to limit non-monetary transactions on the Bitcoin network, or BIP-110, is a bad idea., They have also argued BIP-110 wouldn’t cause a chain split, as many fear, while adding that the BIP-110 fork imposes a temporary one-year limit and thus wouldn’t invalidate fee-paying transactions over the long term. This includes arbitrary data dumps and NFT-like “Ordinals” inscriptions that critics argue are clogging the network and driving up costs for everyday users [cite: Bitcoin Improvement Proposal-110 was introduced in December 2025 to stop nonfungible token-like Ordinals inscriptions and other arbitrary data from spamming the network and to preserve BTC’s main use as a peer-to-peer cash system. “Many Bitcoiners I respect support BIP 110. They want to keep validation accessible, protect node operators from unwanted costs and content, preserve affordable payments, and keep Bitcoin focused on sound money rather than general-purpose data storage. Those are serious concerns. I share the objectives. I disagree about the remedy,” Saylor said. He added.
The proposal was created by a pseudonymous developer named “Dathon Ohm” and has received heavy backing from core Bitcoin purists, including Ocean protocol founder Luke Dashjr. Proponents argue that network bloat is a massive threat to decentralization because it makes running a standard validation node too expensive for regular people [cite: “Many Bitcoiners I respect support BIP 110. They want to keep validation accessible, protect node operators from unwanted costs and content, preserve affordable payments, and keep Bitcoin focused on sound money rather than general-purpose data storage. Those are serious concerns. I share the objectives. I disagree about the remedy,” Saylor said. He added, “Dashjr and other BIP-110 supporters have called Ordinals-driven bloat a “serious threat” to the network, prompting the need for an imminent fix. ” To them, Bitcoin must remain laser-focused on being a peer-to-peer cash system, not a global hard drive for JPEG images [cite: Bitcoin Improvement Proposal-110 was introduced in December 2025 to stop nonfungible token-like Ordinals inscriptions and other arbitrary data from spamming the network and to preserve BTC’s main use as a peer-to-peer cash system. “Many Bitcoiners I respect support BIP 110. They want to keep validation accessible, protect node operators from unwanted costs and content, preserve affordable payments, and keep Bitcoin focused on sound money rather than general-purpose data storage. Those are serious concerns. I share the objectives. I disagree about the remedy,” Saylor said. He added.
Saylor’s Counter-Argument: Protection vs. Policing
While Saylor acknowledges these node-bloat concerns are completely serious, he argues that altering the protocol to block certain types of fee-paying data goes against everything Bitcoin stands for [cite]: In a roughly 3,700-word post on X.com, the man in control of the largest Bitcoin (BTC) corporate treasury made a case for what he said are “neutral rules, hard consensus, open markets, and permissionless innovation.”, “Many Bitcoiners I respect support BIP 110. They want to keep validation accessible, protect node operators from unwanted costs and content, preserve affordable payments, and keep Bitcoin focused on sound money rather than general-purpose data storage. Those are serious concerns. I share the objectives. I disagree about the remedy,” Saylor said. He added, “Saylor’s manifesto champions absolute permissionless innovation, hard consensus, and entirely neutral rules.”
Saylor isn’t alone in his resistance. He joins a heavy-hitting faction of network veterans, including Blockstream CEO Adam Back, who has publicly slammed BIP-110 as a misguided “quest to police other people.”
Opponents argue that true decentralization dictates that no single group should ever be allowed to impose their personal moral or functional views on others. If a user is willing to pay the required market transaction fees to put data on the blockchain, the network should neutrally process it regardless of whether a developer thinks that data is “sound money” or “spam.” cite: “Many Bitcoiners I respect support BIP 110. They want to keep validation accessible, protect node operators from unwanted costs and content, preserve affordable payments, and keep Bitcoin focused on sound money rather than general-purpose data storage. Those are serious concerns. I share the objectives. I disagree about the remedy,” Saylor said. He added, “He said Bitcoin’s decentralization should mean “you can’t impose your views on others,'” calling it incompatible with BTC’s cypherpunk ethos of permissionless, censorship-resistant money. Trying to censor transactions threatens the core cypherpunk ethos of a censorship-resistant, open marketplace.
The Irony of the Timing
What makes this philosophical clash so fascinating is that the entire debate is happening while the actual “threat” of Ordinals has slowed to a crawl.
- The Peak: In August 2023, the blockchain was witnessing a staggering 400,000 daily Ordinals inscriptions [cite: The dispute comes at a time when Ordinals activity is at near all-time lows, with fewer than 10,000 Ordinals inscribed into the Bitcoin blockchain on a daily basis over the last month, down from the more than 400,000 seen during its peak in August 2023].
- The Present: Over the past month, that activity has fallen off a cliff, hitting near all-time lows of fewer than 10,000 daily inscriptions [cite: The dispute comes at a time when Ordinals activity is at near all-time lows, with fewer than 10,000 Ordinals inscribed into the Bitcoin blockchain on a daily basis over the last month, down from the more than 400,000 seen during its peak in August 2023.].
Because the market has naturally cooled the hype around onchain data storage, opponents argue that a drastic, protocol-altering soft fork is a massive overreaction to a self-correcting issue.
Will BIP-110 Actually Pass?
Despite the explosive rhetoric dominating crypto social media, the actual math required to push BIP-110 across the finish line makes activation highly unlikely.
For the proposal to go live, it requires a clear 55% majority support from the active Bitcoin nodes validating blocks across a single block “period.” During the most recent voting window (period 475), node support sat at a microscopic 1%.
Even though node operators running the code have ticked up slightly past 2% recently, the proposal remains miles away from achieving the hard institutional consensus it needs. What this debate really shows us is that as Bitcoin matures into a multi-trillion-dollar global asset, the friction between purist ideals of network purity and the realities of a completely free, permissionless market will only continue to heat up [cite: In a roughly 3,700-word post on X.com, the man in control of the largest Bitcoin (BTC) corporate treasury made a case for what he said are “neutral rules, hard consensus, open markets, and permissionless innovation.” “Many Bitcoiners I respect support BIP 110. They want to keep validation accessible, protect node operators from unwanted costs and content, preserve affordable payments, and keep Bitcoin focused on sound money rather than general-purpose data storage. Those are serious concerns. I share the objectives. I disagree about the remedy,” Saylor said. He added.
