Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor published a roughly 3,700-word post on X.com Sunday laying out what he calls ‘110 reasons’ why Bitcoin Improvement Proposal-110 is a bad idea, intensifying the debate over one of Bitcoin’s most significant protocol-level disputes in years.
What Is BIP-110?
Bitcoin Improvement Proposal-110 was introduced in December 2025 by pseudonymous developer ‘Dathon Ohm,’ with backing from Ocean protocol founder Luke Dashjr. The proposal calls for a temporary fork that would limit non-monetary transactions on the Bitcoin network, specifically targeting Ordinals inscriptions and other arbitrary data that supporters argue spam the network and dilute BTC’s core purpose as a peer-to-peer cash system.
Blockstream CEO Adam Back stands among its prominent opponents, previously describing the proposal as a ‘quest to police other people’ and arguing that Bitcoin’s decentralization means ‘you can’t impose your views on others,’ calling BIP-110 incompatible with BTC’s cypherpunk ethos of permissionless, censorship-resistant money.
Saylor’s Position: Same Goals, Wrong Remedy
Saylor, who controls the largest Bitcoin corporate treasury, framed his critique carefully, separating the proposal from the people behind it. In his post, which had accumulated 879,000 views, 692 replies, and 852 retweets by noon ET on Sunday, he acknowledged that many Bitcoiners he respects back BIP-110 to keep validation accessible, protect node operators, and keep Bitcoin focused on sound money. Those objectives he shares, he said: ‘I disagree about the remedy.’
He added: ‘This article critiques the proposal, not the people behind it. I assume good faith. Bitcoin is strongest when we can disagree vigorously without mistaking allies for enemies.’
Saylor’s stated position champions ‘neutral rules, hard consensus, open markets, and permissionless innovation.’
Activation Threshold Remains Far Off
Despite the heated rhetoric, BIP-110 faces steep practical hurdles. Activation requires 55% of Bitcoin nodes validating blocks to signal support across a full block period. In the most recent period, period number 475 spanning blocks 955,584 to 957,599, only 1% of blocks signalled support.
The dispute is also unfolding as the trigger for it weakens. Ordinals inscription activity has collapsed to fewer than 10,000 daily inscriptions over the past month, a sharp drop from the peak of more than 400,000 per day seen in August 2023, according to Dune Analytics data.
Supporters Push Back on Chain-Split Fears
Dashjr and fellow BIP-110 backers have argued that Ordinals-driven blockchain bloat remains a ‘serious threat’ to the network requiring an immediate fix. They contend the fork would not trigger a chain split, as critics fear, and note the proposal imposes only a temporary one-year restriction, meaning fee-paying transactions would not be invalidated over the long term.
The controversy is being compared to the Blocksize Wars of 2015 to 2017, when the Bitcoin community debated raising the block size limit for scalability, a fight that also risked splitting the chain and divided developers, miners, and businesses for years.
