Support Rate Less Than 1%, BIP-110 Still Pushes Bitcoin Towards a Soft Fork?
Title: BIP-110 Pushes Bitcoin Towards a Soft Fork Despite Less Than 1% Approval
With its August mandatory activation window approaching, the controversial BIP-110 proposal is back in the spotlight. Proposed in December 2025 by Dathon Ohm and supported by Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr, BIP-110 aims to impose a one-year limit on arbitrary/non-monetary data in Bitcoin transactions, primarily targeting large data storage like Ordinals and Bitcoin NFTs, to reduce network "spam" and refocus Bitcoin on its monetary function.
However, the proposal faces overwhelming opposition. To activate, BIP-110 requires a 55% threshold, yet current miner support is below 1%. Of the 102,674 network nodes, only 14.64% (15,035) signal readiness to enforce it. Despite this lack of consensus, BIP-110 has a contentious "mandatory window" mechanism: if the threshold isn't met by block height 961,632, supporting nodes will begin rejecting non-compliant blocks from height 961,632 to 963,647, attempting to force activation by block 965,664. This could lead to a chain split in early August between a minority chain enforcing BIP-110 and the main chain.
Proponents, led by Luke Dashjr (founder of Ocean mining pool), argue that inscriptions constitute an "attack" on Bitcoin, congesting block space and raising transaction fees, thereby undermining Bitcoin's primary use as money. They view BIP-110 not as a change but as a reversal of a harmful change.
Opponents, including figures like Adam Back, Jameson Lopp, and Michael Saylor, contend that BIP-110 fails to solve the spam problem while creating new risks. They warn it could stifle future innovation (e.g., impacting BitVM), introduce transaction censorship—eroding Bitcoin's neutrality—and potentially cause a damaging chain split that fragments developer resources, hash power, and monetary consensus. They argue market-based fee pressure and block size limits already manage congestion effectively.
Potential outcomes post-activation include: 1) The BIP-110 chain stalling due to insufficient hash power; 2) The BIP-110 chain becoming the longest chain if it gains majority miner support (though currently, Ocean holds only 2.6% of hash power vs. opponents like F2Pool at 13.6%); or 3) A persistent minority chain that remains economically unviable, potentially leading to a permanent fork. Most analysts and prediction markets deem BIP-110's success unlikely, with one market giving only a 10% probability that it will become the accepted longest chain by September 2026.
marsbit07/17 10:27