Luke Dashjr Removed as Bitcoin BIP Editor After Controversial BIP-110 Fork Stalls
Key Takeaways
- •Luke Dashjr was removed as a BIP editor after being accused of prematurely assigning a BIP number to BIP-110 and merging an update without following due process.
- •BIP-110 secured only approximately 2.6% miner support, far below the 55% threshold required, causing the forked chain to halt after mining just two blocks.
- •Developer Mark Erhardt noted that Dashjr had contributed fewer than 1% of BIP editor comments since additional editors began serving in April 2024.
- •Dashjr rejected the accusations as false and announced a sabbatical from his roles as chair and CTO of mining pool Ocean.
- •The BIP-110 proposal highlighted a long-standing philosophical divide within the Bitcoin community over whether the network should primarily serve financial transactions or support broader data storage.
Dashjr said he is taking a sabbatical from his role as chair and chief technology officer of mining pool Ocean.
Luke Dashjr, one of the key proponents of the BIP-110 soft-fork attempt, has been removed from his position as an editor of Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs), the formal process for proposing changes to the Bitcoin network. BIP editors serve as informal gatekeepers who review proposals for technical completeness and process compliance in a system that has no central authority — making editorial conduct a sensitive governance matter.
The motion to remove Dashjr was carried shortly after the controversial BIP-110 — an attempt to temporarily restrict the use of the Bitcoin network for non-financial purposes — stalled almost immediately upon entering a signaling period during which miners and node operators demonstrate their support.
Dashjr, among the most prominent Bitcoin developers driving the BIP-110 initiative, was accused of abusing his editorial authority by attempting to assign the proposal a BIP number before it had been discussed and by quickly merging an update into the repository without following due process (GitHub PR #2248).
"The latter is particularly notable given that Luke has otherwise made hardly any contributions to the day-to-day work of the BIP Editors since the additional editors began serving in April 2024: he left fewer than 1% of the BIP Editor comments in the repository since then, and the merge action of this PR was his first since May 2024," Bitcoin developer Mark Erhardt wrote in a motion calling for Dashjr's removal on Aug. 9.
Dashjr called his removal "an abuse of power" in a post on X. He had previously described the accusations as false when the motion was first put forward (X post).
He went on to say that he is taking a sabbatical from his role as chair and chief technology officer of mining pool Ocean to turn his "immediate focus to working Bitcoin and open-source projects to support Bitcoin" (X post).
BIP-110 was an attempt to set up a breakaway Bitcoin chain with restrictions on storing non-financial data such as images and text — a use of the main Bitcoin network that became popular following the advent of the Ordinals protocol in 2023. The Ordinals debate has exposed a long-running philosophical divide in the Bitcoin community between those who view the network primarily as a settlement layer for financial transactions and others who see its censorship-resistant properties as suited to broader data storage.
The proposal, however, never gained momentum, acquiring support from only around 2.6% of miners, far short of the 55% threshold required to succeed. As a result, the forked chain ground to a halt after mining only two blocks, while the principal Bitcoin network continued operating as normal.
Dashjr was previously recognized as one of CoinDesk's Most Influential figures in Bitcoin development.