Bitcoin's most contested proposal in years crossed into a new phase over the weekend, with the network reaching block 961,632 on Saturday and entering the mandatory-signaling window for BIP-110 — a soft fork that would temporarily restrict how much arbitrary data can be embedded in transactions. The turnout was not close: only 51 of the preceding 2,016 blocks, roughly 2.53%, carried the miner signal, far below the 55% threshold the proposal needs to activate early.
The signaling window runs through block 963,647, with a locked-in state scheduled for block 963,648 and transaction restrictions set to take effect at block 965,664 if the proposal survives that far. Cointelegraph reported that miners signal support using version bit 4, and that enforcing nodes will reject blocks lacking the signal once restrictions kick in, while ordinary nodes continue accepting both signaled and unsignaled blocks — a split-enforcement design that already produced a brief minority chain this month before it fell behind the dominant chain.
What BIP-110 Would Actually Restrict
Authored by the pseudonymous developer Dathon Ohm, BIP-110 proposes capping most new output scripts at 34 bytes, limiting OP_RETURN outputs to 83 bytes, and restricting data pushes and witness elements to 256 bytes, alongside temporary limits on several Taproot features. The restrictions are designed to last roughly one year and would exempt any unspent transaction outputs created before the rule activates — meaning existing coins wouldn't be affected, only new transaction formats going forward.
The proposal is aimed squarely at the practice of embedding non-payment data — images, text, and other content — directly on the Bitcoin blockchain, a use case that has grown since the rise of inscription-based protocols and that critics argue clutters block space meant for financial transactions.
Saylor and Adam Back Lead the Opposition
The near-total absence of miner support reflects vocal opposition from some of Bitcoin's most prominent figures. Strategy chairman Michael Saylor has argued the proposal's real risk isn't the data restriction itself but the precedent of using a consensus change to invalidate certain fee-paying transactions, framing it as a dangerous expansion of what soft forks are allowed to do. Blockstream CEO Adam Back — whose Hashcash system is cited in Satoshi Nakamoto's original Bitcoin whitepaper — has separately warned that pushing the proposal against miner consensus risks a genuine network split, and has been openly critical of the proposal's remaining supporters as activation odds have collapsed.
Opponents' broader argument is philosophical as much as technical: Bitcoin's resistance to consensus changes is treated as a feature, not a bug, and they contend the fee market — not a soft fork — should be left to determine how block space gets used, however it's used.
A Hard-Fork Fallback Waits in the Wings
With early activation now mathematically out of reach, attention has shifted to what BIP-110's remaining backers might attempt next. On August 1, developer Chris Guida rebased code for a proof-of-work change, described as a contingency plan should miners continue refusing to signal support — a considerably more disruptive path than a soft fork, since a hard fork risks splitting the network into incompatible chains rather than layering new rules on top of the existing one.
Related: Bitcoin's BIP-110 Soft Fork Enters Signaling With Under 3% Support
For now, BIP-110 remains technically alive through block 965,664, but with signaling support stuck near zero and two of the loudest voices in Bitcoin actively campaigning against it, the proposal's path to activation looks increasingly narrow.
