Strategy founder Michael Saylor has pushed back hard against supporters of BIP-110, the proposed "Reduced Data Temporary Soft Fork," arguing that Bitcoin's base protocol works exactly as intended and does not need to be touched. Saylor said on July 27 that changes to Bitcoin's consensus rules "should be rare and conservative," summarizing his objection with a blunt line: don't fix what isn't broken.
BIP-110 aims to restrict the size of transaction data that can be embedded in blocks, a move its backers say would curb the kind of Ordinals-style inscriptions that have made Bitcoin's blockspace increasingly resemble activity on networks like Solana. Opponents, including Blockstream co-founder Adam Back, argue that Bitcoin's value proposition rests on protocol stability rather than periodic tinkering, and some critics have warned the change could expose older BTC addresses to theft vulnerabilities.
Miner Signaling Far Short of Threshold
The numbers underline how far the proposal is from activating. Miner support for BIP-110 currently stands at just 2.3%, well short of the 55% threshold required for the soft fork to lock in, with an August 9, 2026 deadline looming. That gap has left the debate largely rhetorical for now, even as it has split prominent voices in the Bitcoin community.
"Don't fix what's not broken," Saylor said, framing his opposition as a defense of Bitcoin's conservative approach to consensus changes.
A Sharp Rebuttal
Not everyone welcomed Saylor's intervention. Bitcoin researcher Paul Sztorc fired back, calling Saylor a "hypocrite" and pointing out that Saylor himself was once dismissive of Bitcoin in its early years before becoming one of its most prominent corporate holders. Saylor has since built Strategy into the largest corporate holder of BTC and now leads a Bitcoin Security Consortium alongside Coinbase and BlackRock, a role critics say gives him outsized influence over how the network evolves.
Price Action and Network Split Fears
The dispute has not been confined to social media. Market commentator Pierre Rochard attributed a recent dip in Bitcoin's price below $64,000 partly to "BIP-110 FUD," and warned that continued disagreement over the proposal could raise the risk of a contentious network split if miner support fails to consolidate one way or another before the deadline.
With signaling still in the low single digits, BIP-110's fate looks set to be decided less by code and more by whether the Bitcoin community can reach rough consensus in the weeks ahead. For now, Saylor's high-profile opposition adds weight to the case that the soft fork is unlikely to clear its activation bar this cycle.
BIP-110 aimed to curb non-financial data embedded on Bitcoin's chain — capping most new transaction outputs at 34 bytes, limiting the OP_RETURN data field to 83 bytes, and restricting data pushes to 256 bytes, specifically targeting Ordinals inscriptions and BRC-20 tokens. Support never came close to the 55% threshold needed for adoption, ultimately stalling around 2.53%. Saylor published a 110-point essay opposing the proposal, calling it "extremely dangerous" and arguing that rejecting valid, fee-paying transactions sets a precedent that could later be used to censor other categories of Bitcoin activity. The proposal triggered a minority chain split at block 961,632 on August 8, 2026 — that minority chain produced just two blocks over eight hours before stalling entirely, while Bitcoin's main network continued unaffected, exactly the outcome Saylor had predicted.
FAQ
What was BIP-110 actually trying to change?
It aimed to restrict non-financial data (like Ordinals inscriptions and BRC-20 tokens) from being embedded in Bitcoin transactions by capping output and data-field sizes.
What happened to the minority chain that split off?
It produced only two blocks over eight hours before stalling completely, while Bitcoin's main chain continued operating normally — effectively ending the fork attempt.
Source: AMBCrypto
Related: Bitcoin's BIP-110 'Anti-Spam' Fork Dies After Just Two Blocks
