The numbers were never ambiguous. From the moment BIP-110 was first signaled by miners, the count remained frozen at 1%. Not 10%, not 5%—barely a rounding error in a 400 exahash network. Node adoption, measured by Bitcoin Knots clients running the proposed changes, hovered in the low single digits. The proposal to 'temporarily' restrict OP_RETURN, data push limits, and script formats—a soft fork aimed at curbing Ordinals and other non-financial data—was dead before its August deadline. Yet the silence surrounding its quiet passing speaks volumes about Bitcoin's governance dynamics. The ledger does not lie, it only waits to be read.
Context: The War Over Block Space
BIP-110 emerged from a longstanding ideological schism within Bitcoin’s developer community. The Bitcoin Knots faction, led by Luke Dashjr, has consistently argued that the blockchain’s primary purpose is financial settlement—not a platform for arbitrarily large data storage. The 2023–2024 Ordinals boom, which saw millions of inscriptions consuming block space and driving up transaction fees for regular payments, provided a rallying point for these purists. BIP-110 proposed a one-year soft fork that would limit the amount of non-value-bearing data per transaction, effectively halting the inscription of images and text as satoshi-bound metadata.
But the proposal’s activation mechanism was its most contentious feature: UASF (User-Activated Soft Fork) with a mere 55% miner threshold, far below the conventional 95% consensus required for most BIPs. In theory, this lower bar was meant to reduce the power of large mining pools and give users a voice. In practice, it raised the specter of a chain split—a minority chain stubbornly enforcing new rules while the majority continued processing higher-revenue Ordinals transactions. Prominent figures like Michael Saylor, Adam Back, and Jameson Lopp each voiced sharp objections, warning of irreversible division and a dangerous precedent of censorship.
Core: A Systematic Teardown of a Dead Proposal
From a pure technical perspective, BIP-110 was a parameter-tweak, not an infrastructure innovation. Its failure was not due to engineering complexity but to fundamental misalignment with incentives and governance norms. I have spent years dissecting protocol failure modes—from the EtherDelta integer overflow to the Curve invariant flaw—and the pattern here is familiar: a minority faction attempts to override market dynamics through protocol-level enforcement, underestimating the network's resistance to change.
The Miner Economics Factor
Bitcoin miners derive the bulk of their revenue from block subsidies, but fee income—especially from high-fee Ordinals transactions—has become an increasingly important cushion post-halving. In 2025, Ordinals-related fees contribute roughly 10–15% of total miner revenue during high-volume periods. BIP-110 would have eliminated these fees, forcing miners to accept a 10-15% haircut. Unsurprisingly, mining pools showed zero enthusiasm. Signal clx: the absence of large pools like F2Pool and AntPool from the support list was a clear rejection.
The Governance Paradox
UASF was designed to bypass miner consensus, but in practice, it exposed a deeper truth: Bitcoin’s governance is not a pure democracy of hash power or node count; it is a fragile equilibrium of economic, social, and technical forces. The 55% threshold was an attempt to lower the barrier for change, yet it paradoxically increased the risk of the very outcome it sought to avoid—a contentious fork. Lopp’s warning was precise: any activation below 95% invites a split where both sides claim legitimacy. The ledger does not lie, but a forked ledger confuses the truth.
The Code and the Law
Another layer: BIP-110’s proponents framed it as a 'temporary' fix, but once a protocol imposes content-based restrictions, the door opens to broader censorship. Saylor’s argument—that this would 'invalidate paying transactions'—was not a hypothetical. Under the proposal, a standard payment transaction that inadvertently included an OP_RETURN output larger than the new limit would be rejected. The principle of 'code is law' here collides with the reality that code can also be a tool for selective prohibition. In my forensic audits, I have seen similar attempts to redefine 'valid' transactions in other chains—they almost always require strong community consensus to avoid revolt. Bitcoin Core developers knew this; hence, the proposal never made it past the drafting stage.
Contrarian: What the Bulls Got Right
Yet, the proposal’s failure does not mean its underlying concern is invalid. Ordinals have introduced a non-trivial surge in mempool congestion and transaction latency for low-fee transfers. The average confirmation time for a 1 sat/vB transaction has risen from minutes to hours during peak Ordinals activity. BIP-110 was a blunt instrument, but the problem it addressed—block space being consumed by low-value data—is real. The contrarian angle: the market’s self-correcting mechanism (variable fees) already works. Ordinals users pay more for their inscriptions because they value the space higher than payment users. Imposing a protocol limit would only redistribute that value to high-priority payment users, not eliminate congestion. The free-market purists were right to trust the price signal.
Furthermore, the opposition’s fear that a failed UASF would break Bitcoin’s brand was overblown. The network absorbed this controversy with barely a ripple in its price or hashrate. Bitcoin’s social layer is resilient precisely because these debates happen publicly, are resolved by consent, and the chain moves on. The real risk is not a single failed BIP but a pattern of repeated attempts that erode the community’s trust in the upgrade process. For now, the status quo is stable.
Takeaway: The Metastable Equilibrium
BIP-110’s quiet death is not an ending but a calibration point. Bitcoin’s governance has once again demonstrated that 'no consensus, no change' is not a bug but a feature. The proposal’s authors will likely retreat, regroup, and perhaps return with a more moderate version—or abandon the approach altogether. The ledger does not lie, but it also does not endure frivolous edits. The lesson for on-chain observers: pay attention to the signal strength of miner votes and node adoption. When those numbers are in the single digits, the proposal is already dead. The real story is not the failure of BIP-110 but the continued health of Bitcoin’s immune system.
As I concluded in my post-mortem of the Curve vulnerability: 'The code permits what the law forbids, but only if the law is written wisely.' BIP-110 was not wisely written. The chain lives.