BIP-110 goals to stop the storage of probably unlawful knowledge on Bitcoin nodes.
The talk exposes tensions over governance, spam and protocol neutrality.
Enchancment Proposal 110 (BIP-110) reactivated a dispute that expanded between the group of Bitcoin builders and customers all through 2025: whether or not the community ought to tolerate non-financial makes use of or be restricted completely to a financial system.
Subsequently, this text will overview 5 keys to understanding the battle round BIP-110:
1) What’s it, what’s it for and the way did BIP-110 originate?
BIP is a typical doc for proposing adjustments or new options in Bitcoin. On this framework, BIP-110 emerges as a proposal for tender fork (tender fork) to limit non-financial makes use of of the community, as reported by CriptoNoticias.
Its intention is the usage of Bitcoin as a digital cash system, prioritizing funds and settlements over these non-monetary makes use of that compete for area within the blocks (transactions meant to retailer arbitrary knowledge, equivalent to photos, textual content, for instance)
BIP-110, dubbed “non permanent tender fork to cut back knowledge,” was created by an nameless developer who operates below the pseudonym Dathon Ohm.
Initially referred to as BIP-444, the proposal was formally recognized as BIP-110 as soon as its code was built-in into the official Bitcoin repository.
On the time of this text, the doc is in draft standing, indicating that is in its earliest section of growth and topic to energetic debates throughout the group.
2) How does BIP-110 work?
The proposal tightens the acceptance standards within the nodes by strict validation guidelinesdesigned particularly to mitigate the propagation of arbitrary knowledge on the chain.
This mechanism operates on the community coverage stage (node coverage) as a substitute of being a complete rewrite of the protocol, permitting a management over data visitors.
In sensible phrases, the proposal seeks to stop the community from getting used to insert knowledge that doesn’t have financial functions, with out affecting regular bitcoin transactions between customers. The concept is to order area within the blocks for funds and settlements.
3) What’s the alleged drawback that BIP-110 seeks to unravel?
The BIP-110 arises as a response to what some bitcoiners take into account spam on the community, that’s, transactions that don’t pursue financial functions. A lot of this visitors is related to registrations by the opcode OP_RETURN and protocols equivalent to Ordinals.
For detractors of those makes use of, the inclusion of such arbitrary inscriptions in Bitcoin will increase the dimensions of the chain and raises the working prices of the nodes.
In return, the builders of the reference consumer, Bitcoin Core, and their followers, defend and promote freedom of use in Bitcoin. By Might 2025, nearly half of the transactions They weren’t monetarya development that prolonged till the top of that 12 months, as reported by CriptoNoticias.
BIP-110 warns that growing the OP_RETURN area to 100,000 kilobytes (kB) in Bitcoin Core model 30 (v.30) permits embedding giant volumes of non-financial knowledge, equivalent to photos or recordsdata. This capability raises concern concerning the doable inclusion of unlawful materialswhich might expose node operators to authorized and moral dangers by being compelled to retailer such content material.
4) The talk on BIP-110: rules, governance and prices
The BIP-110 proposal divides the group between those that demand a technical cleanup and people who worry the fragility of the consensus.
Journalist Hodlonaut and bitcoin group founder Maya Parbhoe encourage the decision to motion. Each take into account that the insurance policies of Bitcoin Core allowed a scientific abuse of block area by inscriptions.
Parbhoe claims that “Ordinals don’t belong in Bitcoin” and that they symbolize a vector of exploitation.
Analyst George Bodine joins this place, who introduces a normative argument. He maintains that unlawful and obscene content material harms node operators and should be made artificially costlier.
From the BitMEX group they provide a special studying. The evaluation agency means that Bitcoin Core didn’t push controversial insurance policies, however as a substitute reacted slowly. They attribute the present state of affairs to miners just like the MARA firm (MARA) and relay companies that facilitated the unfold of those transactions.
Adam Again, co-founder of Blockstream, rejects the thought of prohibiting the «spam«. In line with Again, tightening the principles could have the alternative impact: attackers will disguise knowledge in buildings which might be extra advanced and costly to course of.
Political threat additionally generates necessary alerts. Developer Depraved warns that a failed activation try (by BIP-110) “coordination capital burn”. This would scale back the group’s capacity to prepare future crucial adjustments with out fragmenting the community.
However, the founding father of the Bull Bitcoin pockets, Francis Pouliot, strengthened Depraved’s imaginative and prescient with a historic lesson. For him, Bitcoin’s best power is that nobody can modify its guidelines arbitrarily to unravel non permanent use issues.
Bitcoin analyst Justin Bechler believes that 1,000,000 greenback bitcoin it relies upon of three elements:
- Of the credibility of its financial coverage.
- Of his resistance to censorship.
- Of the community of nodes that enforces each.
If one among them weakens, your complete argument would lose pressure. Bechler presents the BIP-110 as a brief brake to get well 36% of block areawith out affecting monetary transactions.
Debate compilation
- Hodlonaut of the Mambhoe: They promote BIP-110 to cease the usage of inscriptions and Ordinals on the principle chain.
- Adam Again: He argues that technical restrictions shift undesirable content material towards extra pricey cloaking strategies for nodes.
- Depraved: He warns that failed activation fragments consensus and exhausts the group’s capability for political coordination.
- Francis Pouliot: He argues that the immutability of the principles protects Bitcoin from governance captures and arbitrary adjustments.
- Justin Bechler: He estimates the transfer would get well 36% of block area by filtering non-financial transactions for a 12 months.
5) How may BIP-110 activate (or fail)?
The BIP-110 contemplates two doable activation pathwayseach by a easy fork (tender fork)that’s, a rule change suitable with non-updated nodes, at the least in its theoretical design.
- Scheduled Activation (Flag Day): The primary observe units a deadline of 2026 (particularly upon reaching block top 893,100). From then on, knowledge restriction guidelines could be robotically activated for the upgraded nodes, ignoring any blocks containing prohibited knowledge.
- Reactive Activation and Reorganization: would permit the principles to be activated instantly if unlawful materials is detected. This might pressure a retroactive reorganization of the chain to invalidate already mined blocks containing such content material, stopping it from being completely recorded in Bitcoin historical past.
The writer admits that, not like different tender forks, this mechanism may trigger a brief chain cut up, since non-updated nodes would proceed to just accept blocks that the BIP-110 considers invalid.
Nonetheless, he maintains that this threat could be an appropriate value to stop the persistence of illicit content materialwhich strikes the talk from the technical to the normative and philosophical.
Moreover, the proposal features a one-year sundown clause, after which the principles could be void except the group decides to resume them.
Lastly, the rejection or non-adoption of BIP-110 doesn’t depend upon an replace to Bitcoin Core, essentially the most extensively used community consumer. Because the proposal isn’t a part of that consumer.
Its implementation would require node operators voluntarily set up the Bitcoin Knots software programthe consumer from which the proposer drives its activation.
In that framework, if a essential mass of nodes decides to not set up Knots or apply the tender fork, BIP-110 merely doesn’t activate, reinforcing that its destiny is tied to the social and operational consensus of the community, not a centralized growth choice.
