BIP-110 has attracted only a sliver of miner support, yet its user-activated design means the proposal continues toward its activation date — and, most likely, beyond.

Public miner signalling for BIP-110 remains far below the level most observers associate with a successful Bitcoin upgrade, with the likely activation point arriving on Aug. 9. Supporters say that misses the point: BIP-110 is a user-activated soft fork, not a miner vote. The episode reveals that Bitcoin's governance is ultimately driven by economic coordination, not outright consensus.

Bitcoin is approaching a rare test this weekend, with a small group of nodes preparing to reject blocks produced by almost all of the network's miners. Since Ordinals inscriptions began appearing on Bitcoin in early 2023, the network has seen sustained demand for non-financial block space, generating substantial fee revenue for miners while drawing criticism from users who argue the practice inflates transaction costs for ordinary payments.

Approaching the Signalling Deadline

The Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP)-110, a controversial plan to temporarily restrict how much non-payment data can be stored on the Bitcoin blockchain, approaches its long-planned mandatory signalling period, expected sometime on Aug. 9. The actual activation, if it takes place, would follow at block 965,664, estimated around four weeks later.

Its ordinary 55% approval threshold is already out of reach. On paper, BIP-110 looks finished: public signalling from mining pools is negligible at under 3%, with only two days remaining until the Bitcoin network reaches the height at which the signalling window opens. If BIP-110 were a referendum, "landslide" would not begin to describe the scale of its defeat.

Nodes are computers running Bitcoin software that independently check transactions and blocks against the network's rules, rejecting anything they consider invalid. Miners create new blocks, while nodes decide whether to accept them.

"The Plebs Stand Up"

BIP-110's proponents argue that Bitcoin's open-source software means anyone is free to adopt a different version of the code and enforce whatever rules they believe define the network.

Dathon Ohm, the proposal's pseudonymous author, declared: "Bitcoiners are about to show the world, once again, what happens when the plebs stand up against large, corrupt institutions who are telling us Bitcoin isn't money and our nodes belong to them," in a thread on X on Thursday.

Rhetoric aside, the thread gave instructions to miners planning to enforce the BIP-110 rulebook, advising them to upgrade to Bitcoin Knots (the primary software carrying and enforcing BIP-110) and warning that Bitcoin Core (the network's principal software representing the current implementation of Bitcoin's rules) should not be run as it would become "insecure."

Ohm added: "BIP-110 is a movement by the plebs, for the plebs, standing up and arming themselves with software to tell these institutions in one resounding, unified voice: BITCOIN IS MONEY, OUR NODES BELONG TO US, AND WE WILL NEVER GIVE UP."

Restricting Ordinals and Runes

BIP-110 is designed to temporarily tighten Bitcoin's consensus rules to make inscription techniques used by Ordinals and Runes impractical. Its supporters argue that using the network for non-financial data consumes block space, makes it more expensive to run, and undermines Bitcoin's purpose as digital money.

Critics have pointed to the lack of miner support as evidence that the proposal is effectively dead. Its supporters reject that premise, arguing that miners do not govern Bitcoin — they merely produce the blocks. Nodes decide whether those blocks comply with the rules.

User-activated soft forks (UASFs) are designed around that principle, allowing node operators to begin enforcing new rules from a predetermined block height regardless of miner support. This philosophy underpinned the activation of SegWit in 2017 in the face of miner resistance. SegWit enabled the separation of digital signatures from transaction data, ironically paving the way for Ordinals and Runes — the very techniques BIP-110 seeks to restrict.

Potential Chain Split

When Bitcoin reaches block 961,632, nodes running BIP-110 software will begin rejecting blocks that fail to signal, even if they are accepted by the wider network. If some miners continue producing signalling blocks while the rest mine as usual, two branches could emerge — and the BIP-110 branch would likely have only a small fraction of Bitcoin's hash rate at the outset. A persistent split would leave users, wallets, and exchanges having to decide which chain represents "Bitcoin," with potential implications for transaction confirmations and custodial operations across the ecosystem.

Whether this outcome would favour BIP-110 remains to be seen, though many observers consider it unlikely. Nevertheless, some bitcoin-only exchanges plan to temporarily pause deposits and withdrawals around the activation window. Such precautions reflect the reality that Bitcoin consensus is not produced by hash rate alone, nor by node counts in isolation, but by coordination among miners, exchanges, wallet providers, and other participants.

For what it is worth, BIP-110 appears to have scant support among influential figures beyond the mining sector, with the likes of Michael Saylor and Adam Back both voicing their opposition.

A Debate Beyond "Spam"

BIP-110 opponents argue that Bitcoin's greatest strength is its exceptionally high threshold for changing consensus rules, and contend that the network's fee market should determine how block space is used.

Its supporters see things differently. They argue that BIP-110 is not rewriting Bitcoin so much as restoring it, maintaining that users have both the right and the responsibility to reject software changes they believe alter the network's intended behaviour.

Whether BIP-110 succeeds or fails, beyond the passing of its signalling point on Aug. 9, its significance is likely to reverberate well beyond any debate over Ordinals or so-called "spam."

BIP-110's next test will therefore be measurable in blocks, not arguments. If enforcing nodes reject the dominant chain on Sunday, the question becomes whether enough miners, exchanges, and users follow them to keep a second branch alive.