The unsuccessful implementation of the BIP-110 soft fork has become a telling example of why it is virtually impossible today to recreate the conditions under which the first cryptocurrency appeared. This opinion was expressed by Plan B Network Director Giacomo Zucco on The Starting Block podcast.
Why Bitcoin BIP-110 failed — ft Giacomo Zucco https://t.co/fomrEgb4Ok
— The Block (@TheBlockCo) August 12, 2026
The proposal suggested changing the consensus rules to fight transactions that its supporters considered "spam." However, it did not receive widespread support, resulting in nodes that switched to the new rules splitting off from the main network into a separate fork with a negligible share of the hashrate.
One of the most active ideologists of BIP-110, developer Luke Dashjr, tried to maintain the viability of the new blockchain, including by changing the Proof-of-Work. According to Zucco, the programmer planned to choose a new algorithm by selecting it randomly based on a block hash in Testnet4. But miners started manipulating blocks to match the desired symbol, forcing the experiment to be aborted and restarted.
"All governance was concentrated in one person. He was literally giving orders via Discord — that's the absolute epitome of centralization, it can't get any worse. And this clearly proves that it's simply impossible to recreate Bitcoin honestly today," stated the Plan B Network director.
He contrasted this situation with the first years of digital gold's existence. According to Zucco, the network developed back then without the current attention from authorities, speculators, and other participants interested in gaining any advantages.
"Bitcoin was created and maintained for several years out of sight of markets, governments, state agencies with interventionist intentions, speculators, excessive speculators, players, trolls, and people who just want to disrupt the process for fun," he explained.
It is this set of circumstances that Zucco called the "immaculate conception" of Bitcoin — and repeating it in our days is already impossible, the expert emphasized.
"Moral Panic"
The Plan B director characterized BIP-110 as a "very complex social phenomenon," intertwining several intra-community conflicts:
- disputes about the nature of "spam";
- questions surrounding Bitcoin Core;
- the distribution of roles between nodes and miners.
At the same time, Zucco acknowledged that part of the discussion was beneficial. In particular, he called the question about the permissibility of arbitrary data in the blockchain healthy and admitted that certain aspects of Bitcoin Core governance indeed deserve criticism.
However, he criticized the argument for the need for urgent changes due to the possibility of placing illegal content in the network and potential legal risks for node operators:
"This created a false sense of emergency [...] and made people rush to do what supposedly needed to be done right now."
According to him, such rhetoric shifts a technical or economic debate into a different realm, where calls to "save Bitcoin at the cost of concessions" signal an imminent fork and replace rational argumentation with panic sentiments.
Zucco Criticizes Dashjr's Removal
Amid the conflict surrounding BIP-110, developers proposed removing Dashjr from his position as editor of Bitcoin Proposals. On August 11th, he was removed from this post for overstepping his authority. The Plan B director criticized the decision, calling it a "wrong step at the wrong time."
"It doesn't achieve any substantial or meaningful effect and looks like retribution. Retribution for being wrong," said the expert.
In his opinion, the removal will only strengthen the arguments of BIP-110 supporters who consider the development process of the first cryptocurrency to be centralized.
Recall that in February, cypherpunk Adam Back called the proposal an attack on digital gold's reputation and a "lynch mob."
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