Strategy chair urges Bitcoin to reject BIP-110 as August soft fork deadline nears

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Bitcoin BIP-110 soft fork debate

Highlights

Michael Saylor published a 110-point essay urging Bitcoin participants to reject BIP-110 before the August 7 mandatory signaling period begins.
Current block signaling support for BIP-110 is at 0.86%, far below the 55% threshold for early lock-in and raising minority-chain split risks.
Jason Hughes of Ocean estimates node support at 7% to 15%, arguing the BIP-110 proposal, which would restrict data-heavy transactions for one year, is likely to fail.

Essay challenges soft fork before signaling window

As first reported by The Block, Saylor published a 110-point essay on X on Saturday titled "110 Reasons BIP 110 Is a Bad Idea," urging Bitcoin participants to reject the proposal ahead of its contested activation timeline.

The Strategy co-founder and executive chairman says supporters may want to protect Bitcoin, but that the proposed remedy is more dangerous than the underlying problem. His central argument is that consensus rules cannot reliably judge the purpose of valid transactions and therefore should not attempt to do so. He writes that users who object to unwanted data can choose not to use, relay, index or mine it, and that any rule change should address a demonstrated denial-of-service or validation risk rather than inferred intent.

The final point in Saylor's list recasts the acronym BIP as a "Bitcoin Iatrogenic Proposal," using a medical term for harm caused by treatment. The essay closes with a call for neutrality, saying Bitcoin needs guardians of neutrality rather than guardians of purity.

Low signaling support raises split risk

BIP-110 was first published as BIP-444 in October 2025 after Bitcoin Core's v30 release lifted default OP_RETURN data limits. The proposal is structured as a one-year soft fork that groups seven restrictions on data-heavy transactions, and a BIP-110-enabled client is based on Bitcoin Knots, the node software maintained by Ocean CTO Luke Dashjr, one of its best-known backers.

Under the deployment schedule, a mandatory signaling period opens near block 961,632, expected around Aug. 7 ET. Enforcing nodes then begin rejecting blocks that fail to signal, with the rules taking effect for those nodes around Sept. 1.

Public monitoring data shows signaling blocks account for 0.86% of the current difficulty period, well below the 55% needed for early lock-in, and the level has never climbed much above 1%. If support remains near current levels, BIP-110 nodes would reject most blocks from non-signaling miners during the mandatory window, creating the possibility of a minority-chain split.

Jason Hughes, Ocean's vice president of development and engineering, estimates node support at 7% to 15% in a Friday guest post for Bitcoin Magazine and argues the proposal is likely to fail. Supporters of BIP-110 contend that allowing arbitrary data storage as a supported Bitcoin use distorts incentives, adds burdens for node operators and forces monetary transactions to compete with non-financial traffic, while presenting the one-year restrictions as a temporary step to preserve Bitcoin's monetary function.

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