Ripple CTO emeritus David Schwartz, one of the original architects of the XRP Ledger, has drawn a sharp line under Bitcoin's latest governance fight, arguing that a breakaway plan to "fix" the main chain is no longer a policy debate but, in his view, an attack dressed up as reform.

The remarks came on Aug. 31 in a reply to BIP-110 supporter loogart, who said the group had accepted defeat on Bitcoin itself and would "continue Bitcoin elsewhere."

Loogart framed the failed soft fork, and the subsequent voluntary hard fork, as open dialogue rather than an assault. Schwartz zeroed in on a single phrase: "the attempt to fix the legacy chain."

"Listen to yourself," he wrote.

https://x.com/JoelKatz/status/2094329534619472221

Calling the Main Chain "Legacy" Changes the Argument

That wording sits at the heart of the dispute. BIP-110 began as a user-activated soft fork aimed at limiting non-financial data on Bitcoin — a response to the long-running debate over Ordinals-style inscriptions filling block space. It failed to win enough mining power: the enforcing minority produced only a couple of blocks, while SHA-256d miners kept building the chain the market still treats as Bitcoin.

Supporters then shifted to a hard fork that replaces SHA-256d with BLAKE2b, adds a new block header, and imposes temporary size caps. Launch was tied to a flag day around block 961,640 in late August.

The pitch is that the new chain is Bitcoin continued by other means. Schwartz's counterpoint is that once you rename the dominant network the "legacy" chain that needs fixing, you have stopped arguing within Bitcoin's rules and started inventing a language that cannot be answered in good faith.

https://x.com/JoelKatz/status/2094331164391862273

In a follow-up, he put it more bluntly: inventing that language means you "depart the realm of good faith disagreements and enter the realm of attacks and lunacy."

A Fork Can Launch and Still Not Be Bitcoin

The technical split is real. BLAKE2b mining is designed so that existing ASIC fleets cannot simply follow the breakaway chain — and that is the point. It also means the project is effectively a new proof-of-work coin with a Bitcoin backstory, not an upgrade adopted by the economic majority.

No major exchange, wallet, or Lightning implementation had committed to the fork before launch. Hashrate, liquidity, and ticker recognition all remain with SHA-256d Bitcoin.

History has been unkind to this pattern. Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV also claimed to be the more faithful continuation of Bitcoin; markets kept the original, and both forks now trade at a fraction of Bitcoin's market value.

Schwartz is not arguing that people cannot fork. His argument is that losing a soft-fork vote and then branding the winner a broken "legacy" system is not governance — it is a refusal to accept the result. The practical test, as the Bitcoin Cash precedent shows, is whether any new chain can attract the hashpower, liquidity, and ecosystem support that back the name "Bitcoin" — none of which the BIP-110 fork had secured before launch.