BIP-110, the most contentious Bitcoin governance proposal since the 2017 block size wars, has effectively failed. The Reduced Data Temporary Soft Fork — designed to ban Ordinals inscriptions and arbitrary data from Bitcoin blocks for one year — enters its mandatory signaling window near block 961...
"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." — Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman, MicroStrategy
BIP-110, the most contentious Bitcoin governance proposal since the 2017 block size wars, has effectively failed. The Reduced Data Temporary Soft Fork — designed to ban Ordinals inscriptions and arbitrary data from Bitcoin blocks for one year — enters its mandatory signaling window near block 961,632 around August 7, 2026, with miner support at 0.00% in the current difficulty period and a peak of 0.7% across all periods since signaling began in March. The proposal requires 55% hashrate approval. It has never exceeded 5 EH/s out of a network total near 940 EH/s.
The proposal's collapse reveals a functioning, if blunt, governance mechanism: Bitcoin's consensus process rejected a rule change that lacked broad economic and mining support, regardless of how strongly a vocal minority advocated for it. The episode also surfaces a parallel fork event — Paul Sztorc's eCash hard fork at block 964,000, projected for August 21 — creating an unusual month in which two competing visions for Bitcoin's future face simultaneous market tests.
BIP-110, formally titled the "Reduced Data Temporary Softfork," was introduced on December 3, 2025, by pseudonymous developer Dathon Ohm, with Bitcoin Core contributor Luke Dashjr credited for the original draft and technical advice. The proposal contained seven consensus rules:
The restrictions were designed to expire automatically after approximately 52,416 blocks (roughly one year). The activation mechanism used a modified BIP9 deployment with a reduced 55% miner-signaling threshold, down from the traditional 95% used in prior soft forks — a design choice that itself became a point of contention.
The stated purpose: refocus Bitcoin on peer-to-peer payments by making inscription-based protocols such as Ordinals, BRC-20 tokens, and Runes technically infeasible at the consensus layer.
The numbers are unambiguous. According to the BIP-110 signaling monitor (bip110.org), miner support has tracked as follows:
| Period | Hashrate Signaling | % of Network (~940 EH/s) | |--------|-------------------|--------------------------| | March 2026 (first block) | ~1 EH/s | ~0.1% | | April–May 2026 | 2–5 EH/s | 0.2–0.5% | | June 2026 | ~5 EH/s | ~0.5% | | Current period (July 12–14) | 0 EH/s | 0.00% | | Peak (any period) | ~5 EH/s | ~0.7% |
No major mining pool has signaled support. Foundry USA, which controls approximately one-third of network hashrate, has not moved. Antpool, at roughly 14% of hashrate, has not moved. The only consistent signaling has come from Ocean, the pool co-founded by Luke Dashjr, which has produced the majority of signaling blocks since March.
Node adoption tells a similar story. Bitcoin Knots, the alternative client that implements BIP-110 rules, reached 8–15% of listening nodes at peak — but listening node counts do not translate to economic weight, and Bitcoin Core v30 remains dominant.
The mandatory signaling window beginning at block 961,632 (projected August 7) will reject any block that fails to signal bit 4. If miners running BIP-110-compatible software represent less than 55% of hashrate at that point — a near certainty given current data — the proposal fails to activate. A minority chain split remains theoretically possible but economically insignificant.
The proposal drew explicit opposition from two of Bitcoin's most prominent figures.
Michael Saylor, executive chairman of MicroStrategy — the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin with over 580,000 BTC on its balance sheet — argued that BIP-110 posed greater risks than the inscription activity it targeted. According to CoinDesk, Saylor stated that the proposal would "invalidate some currently valid, fee-paying transactions," setting a precedent he described as "the danger."
Adam Back, CEO and co-founder of Blockstream, framed his opposition around Bitcoin's cypherpunk design principles rather than any specific view on Ordinals. In a July 11, 2026, post on X, Back described BIP-110 as an attempt to "police other users' activity," according to CoinTribune. He treated transaction neutrality — the network processing all valid, fee-paying transactions equally regardless of purpose — as a core component of Bitcoin's censorship resistance.
Neither Saylor nor Back expressed support for Ordinals specifically. Both argued that imposing new consensus restrictions on what constitutes an acceptable transaction carried risks that outweighed the blockspace concerns cited by proponents.
BIP-110's provenance has been disputed since its publication. The proposal lists Dathon Ohm as author, with Luke Dashjr credited for the original draft. Developer Greg Maxwell publicly alleged that Ocean Mining wrote the proposal and that Dathon Ohm was a pseudonym associated with the pool. Ohm denied the claim.
The dispute matters beyond personality. Ocean is the only mining pool to have consistently signaled for BIP-110. If the pool's leadership also authored the proposal, it raises questions about whether BIP-110 represented a broad community desire to restrict inscription data or a narrower effort by a specific mining operation aligned with a particular vision of Bitcoin's purpose.
Luke Dashjr, for his part, has been a long-standing critic of inscription data, arguing that Ordinals exploited technical loopholes in the Taproot upgrade (activated in November 2021) rather than representing intended functionality. His position preceded BIP-110 and is well-documented in Bitcoin development forums.
The economic case for and against BIP-110 hinges on fee revenue data that has shifted substantially since the inscription boom of 2023–2024.
Peak period (2023–2024):
Current period (mid-2026):
The data presents a paradox. Inscriptions expanded blockspace utilization significantly — an outcome that proponents of an efficient fee market would normally welcome. But the fee revenue from inscription transactions has declined sharply, suggesting that while inscriptions consume space, they increasingly do so at low fee rates. This undercuts both sides: proponents of inscriptions cannot claim they are sustaining miner economics, while opponents cannot argue they are pricing out legitimate payment transactions.
Magic Eden, formerly the largest Ordinals marketplace, shut down support for Bitcoin Ordinals, Runes, and EVM NFTs in late February 2026, with trading ending March 9 — a market signal that the inscription economy was contracting even without consensus-level restrictions.
BIP-110 has drawn comparisons to the 2015–2017 block size wars, the last major governance crisis in Bitcoin's history. The parallels are structural:
The governance lesson, according to analysis from Bitcoin Poland and CryptoBriefing, is precise: UASF-style mechanisms succeed when they represent an economic majority's credible threat to miners who would otherwise obstruct a broadly desired upgrade. They do not function as a tool for a well-organized minority to impose preferences on an indifferent or opposed majority. BIP-110 falls into the latter category.
The 55% threshold — far below the traditional 95% — was itself an acknowledgment that the proposal lacked the near-universal support that prior soft forks like SegWit ultimately achieved. Lowering the bar did not help. The support never materialized.
Coinciding with BIP-110's mandatory signaling window, Drivechain architect Paul Sztorc has scheduled an eCash hard fork at block 964,000, projected for approximately August 21, 2026. The fork would:
The Satoshi coin reassignment drew immediate criticism. Developer Calle and podcaster Peter McCormack called it theft, according to CoinDesk. Approximately 80–85% of early replies to Sztorc's announcement on X expressed negative sentiment, per the same report.
Seven Drivechains are reportedly in development, including a privacy chain modeled on Zcash, a prediction market (Truthcoin), a decentralized exchange (CoinShift), and a quantum-resistant chain (Photon).
The two August events — BIP-110 and eCash — share a timeframe but not a mechanism, purpose, or risk profile. BIP-110 attempts to restrict the existing Bitcoin chain. eCash creates a separate chain entirely. Neither currently commands significant support from the mining or economic majority.
BIP-110's failure-by-indifference clarifies several aspects of Bitcoin's governance:
1. Miners remain the decisive gatekeepers for consensus changes. Despite the UASF framing, no soft fork activates without miner participation. The 55% threshold was a concession; it did not matter. Zero is zero regardless of where you set the bar.
2. Transaction neutrality has become a de facto norm. The opposition from Saylor and Back — neither of whom endorsed Ordinals — established that the principle of processing all valid, fee-paying transactions equally now commands broader support than any specific view on what transactions should contain.
3. The inscription economy is self-correcting. Fee data suggests that inscription activity is declining on its own terms — through market forces, not consensus rules. Magic Eden's exit, sub-$10,000 daily inscription fees, and falling fee-to-revenue ratios all point to natural demand contraction.
4. Bitcoin's immune system works, but slowly. The network absorbed a contentious governance proposal, processed it through signaling, and rejected it without a chain split or significant market disruption. The mechanism is ungraceful but functional.
BIP-110 will be remembered not for what it proposed but for what its failure confirmed: Bitcoin's consensus process, however slow and opaque, functions as designed. A proposal that lacked broad support could not lower the activation threshold enough to compensate for the absence of genuine consensus. The inscription economy that BIP-110 sought to eliminate is contracting on its own — through market forces, platform exits, and declining user demand — without requiring intervention at the protocol layer.
The episode also exposed the limits of UASF-style activism when deployed by a minority. In 2017, the BIP 148 UASF succeeded because it represented the credible economic threat of a majority. In 2026, BIP-110 represented the earnest conviction of a small faction. The network could tell the difference.
August 2026 will test Bitcoin governance twice — once through BIP-110's mandatory signaling window and once through Sztorc's eCash fork. Current data suggests neither will alter Bitcoin's trajectory. The network's capacity to absorb and reject proposals that do not command consensus remains its most durable — and least appreciated — feature.