Two Bitcoin Giants Unite to Reject BIP 110; Adam Back and Michael Saylor Warn of Network-Splitting Threats

A technical debate that for months had remained mostly among Bitcoin’s core developers has finally spilled into the public sphere. Adam Back, one of the founders of Blockstream and the creator of the Hashcash algorithm whose name is listed in Bitcoin’s whitepaper, and Michael Saylor, CEO of Strategy, which holds one of the largest corporate Bitcoin holdings in the world, have openly and strongly stated their rejection of a proposal called BIP 110—better known as the Filtered Fork.

Both rejection statements were delivered on July 11 last, only a few weeks before the mandated activation window for this proposal opens, making this dispute one of the most significant protocol rifts in the Bitcoin ecosystem since the Block Size War that took place from 2015 to 2017.

What Exactly Is BIP 110

BIP 110, officially named the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork, was first introduced in December of last year by a developer using the pseudonym Dathon Ohm. The proposal previously circulated under the number BIP 444 before being renumbered, and Bitcoin Knots developer Luke Dashjr is listed as a contributor in the initial draft as well as remaining its main supporter to this day.

Technically, the proposal is designed to limit large amounts of data that are unrelated to Bitcoin’s monetary function, such as images and embedded tokens via Ordinals, BRC-20, and Runes, for roughly one year. The additional consensus rules proposed include limiting OP_RETURN outputs to a maximum of 83 bytes, limiting a certain amount of data payload to 256 bytes, and limiting certain specific Taproot features.

What makes the proposal controversial is not only its goal, but the activation mechanism. BIP 110 uses a user-activated soft fork approach, in which nodes will continue to enforce the new rules regardless of miners’ majority approval, with a miner signaling threshold of only 55%, far below the conventional 90% to 95% threshold typically used in prior Bitcoin soft forks. The mandatory signaling window is scheduled to begin around the start of next August, with full activation targeted for around September 1, 2026.

Near-Zero Miner Support

Latest mid-July data paints a striking picture: miner signaling support for BIP 110 is far below 1%; even since early May, it has never once cumulatively broken through the 1% mark, and no major mining pool has officially supported the proposal. Adoption at the node level is also relatively low, largely coming from Bitcoin Knots users and an alternative node implementation managed by Dashjr himself.

This situation then triggers serious concerns among senior Bitcoin figures, since forcing activation without broad ecosystem support could result not in a legitimate protocol upgrade, but merely a minority chain separated from the main network.

Adam Back’s Argument: This Is About Bitcoin’s Core Principles

Adam Back voiced his objection through a long thread, describing BIP 110 as an attempt to supervise and filter transactions chosen by other users to be sent. In his view, such an approach directly contradicts Bitcoin’s foundational principles of decentralization and permissionlessness, where anyone may send any protocol-valid transaction without needing permission from anyone.

Back also warned that if supporters of the proposal continue to push the rule changes without broad agreement, the consequence could be the creation of a separate chain from the main Bitcoin network. He said that anyone unhappy with the current situation is theoretically free to band together and create their own fork, but he made it clear that Bitcoin would not join that chain. He also expressed concern that some supporters of the proposal, who are relatively new entrants to the Bitcoin world, might become disappointed later without truly understanding why the majority of the ecosystem rejects it.

Michael Saylor’s Argument: A Dangerous Precedent Worse Than Spam Itself

The day after Back’s statement, Michael Saylor followed with his own remarks on X on July 11. He emphasized that there are 110 things far more dangerous to Bitcoin than the data-spam issue itself. In his view, BIP 110 fundamentally turns a dispute about spam into a consensus change that could invalidate some valid transactions that have paid reasonable fees today.

For Saylor, the real threat is not the existence of non-monetary data on the blockchain, but the precedent that would be created if the Bitcoin community allows the definition of spam to be written directly into consensus rules. He called such a precedent a far more dangerous risk and urged the community to redirect its energy toward threats that are truly significant to the network’s future. Saylor also added that Bitcoin transaction fees are currently low and global fund flows are running smoothly, so in his view spam is not an urgent problem that needs to be addressed through such a radical protocol change.

Technical Criticism From Other Core Developers

The rejection does not stop at the philosophical level alone. Senior Bitcoin Core developer Greg Maxwell previously warned via the developer mailing list that BIP 110 could invalidate previously signed valid transactions or transactions with time locks—an serious technical risk that could have wide impact on users who are completely uninvolved in the Ordinals or non-monetary data debate.

Another developer, Peter Todd, also raised several technical criticisms, including embedding a transaction intentionally designed to comply with BIP 110 specifications to demonstrate that the proposed rules are not fully effective at preventing data storage on the Bitcoin chain, while also highlighting a potential gap that could be exploited to bypass the proposed limitations.

The Support Side: Dashjr Stands Firm

Amid this wave of rejection, Luke Dashjr shows no signs of backing down. In an early-July report, he rejected calls to withdraw the proposal, stating unequivocally that it was already too late to cancel BIP 110. He argued that the presence of Ordinals, Runes, and similar data places non-financial data inside the Bitcoin blockchain and gradually increases long-term costs to store and serve the entire blockchain history for every node operator.

Data supports part of Dashjr’s argument about declining activity, since the average daily number of Ordinals inscriptions has been below ten thousand over the last month, far down from its peak of more than four hundred thousand inscriptions per day in August 2023. Even so, this activity decline has become a counterargument used by BIP 110 opponents, who question the urgency of such a radical protocol change if the problem it aims to address has already shrunk significantly on its own.

What Happens Next

With the mandatory signaling window starting around early August and an activation target in early September, while miner support is still nearly zero, BIP 110’s path toward full activation appears increasingly steep. Observers believe the most likely scenario is not that the new rules will be applied across the entire Bitcoin network, but rather the creation of a small minority chain run by a handful of Bitcoin Knots nodes, separated from the main network that continues to be operated by the majority of the ecosystem without rule changes.

Ultimately, this debate exposes a fundamental tension that has long been stored within the Bitcoin community: between those who want to keep the network as minimally used for non-monetary purposes as possible for long-term efficiency, and those who hold firmly to the principle that Bitcoin must remain a truly permissionless money network, without gatekeepers empowered to decide which transactions are acceptable and which are not. How this debate ends will likely become an important precedent for how the Bitcoin community handles similar protocol disputes in the future.
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