BIP 110 Bitcoin fork proposal approaches deadline with virtually no miner approval

Bitcoin’s BIP 110 proposal, designed to reduce the amount of non-financial data stored on the blockchain, is nearing a critical deadline with almost zero support from miners. Despite widespread discussion around the issue, the proposal has struggled to gain meaningful adoption across the network.

Formally known as the Reduced Data Temporary Soft Fork, BIP 110 represents a broader disagreement over how Bitcoin’s limited block space should be allocated.

Bitcoin transactions are capable of carrying both monetary data and additional information. While OP_RETURN is commonly used for small data entries, other mechanisms involving Bitcoin scripts and witness data have allowed users to store larger amounts of content on-chain. These features have powered applications such as Ordinals, inscriptions, and token-related projects that place images, text, and metadata onto Bitcoin.

The proposal would introduce temporary restrictions on these capabilities for one year. It would lower the OP_RETURN data limit, prevent most arbitrary data additions above 256 bytes, and restrict certain script-based methods that are primarily used for storing information rather than transferring value.

Supporters of BIP 110 argue that the restrictions would protect Bitcoin’s role as a monetary network, reduce storage demands on full nodes, and prevent excessive blockchain growth. Critics believe the proposal crosses into governance territory by creating rules around which transactions should be considered acceptable.

The proposal has attracted opposition from some of Bitcoin’s most recognized figures. Michael Saylor, founder of Strategy, warned that turning a disagreement over blockchain spam into a consensus-level change could introduce a greater risk than the original problem. He argued that changing rules to invalidate currently valid transactions could create a damaging precedent.

Adam Back, co-founder of Blockstream and the creator of Hashcash, also criticized the proposal. He emphasized that Bitcoin’s decentralized network cannot be altered by a small group without broad agreement and suggested that those seeking different rules would need to pursue a separate chain.

BIP 110’s current support levels highlight the challenges facing the proposal. Rather than relying on the traditional approach of gaining strong miner approval, the proposal uses a user-activated soft fork mechanism, allowing nodes to enforce the change independently. It requires 55% miner signaling support, which is much lower than the 95% threshold used for many previous Bitcoin upgrades.

Even with that lower requirement, miner backing has remained almost nonexistent. Signaling has never moved beyond roughly 1% and currently sits at zero, with no major mining pools supporting the proposal.

Node adoption has also remained limited, reaching only low single-digit levels and coming mainly from users operating Bitcoin Knots, an alternative Bitcoin software implementation.

The activation process is continuing according to schedule. The current signaling period covers blocks 957,600 through 959,615, followed by a voluntary lock-in deadline at block 961,542, expected in early August.

If activated, BIP 110 nodes would begin rejecting blocks that fail to follow the proposed rules, with activation anticipated around September. However, given the lack of miner participation and limited node adoption, the change would likely affect only a minority segment of the network rather than result in a universal Bitcoin upgrade.

Bitcoin’s development process relies on voluntary consensus among independent participants rather than centralized control. Miners, node operators, developers, and users collectively determine whether a proposed change becomes part of the network.

The debate surrounding BIP 110 reflects a larger discussion about Bitcoin’s future. Supporters believe limiting non-financial data helps preserve Bitcoin’s purpose as a decentralized payment system, while opponents argue that restricting valid transactions could weaken the network’s permissionless nature.

At present, the proposal’s limited support suggests that BIP 110 has not achieved the broad agreement typically needed for a significant Bitcoin protocol change.