David Schwartz, Ripple's former chief technology officer and a co-author of the XRP Ledger consensus algorithm, publicly criticized Bitcoin Knots on August 11, 2026, after the project claimed that the Bitcoin network was under attack. Schwartz rejected the warning and questioned whether it was designed to mislead readers who lacked the broader context of the situation.

The dispute centers on BIP-110, one of many Bitcoin Improvement Proposals — the standardized format through which developers propose changes to Bitcoin's protocol rules. BIP-110 introduced mandatory signaling beginning at block 961,632. Nodes operating under BIP-110's rules diverged from the main Bitcoin chain, producing blocks 961,632 and 961,633 before coming to a halt. The BIP repository subsequently marked the proposal as closed.

Schwartz voiced his criticism in a post on X (formerly Twitter):

Is the point of this to embarrass yourselves or to mislead people who don't understand the context? Regardless of how you feel about BIP-110, you should condemn this nonsense.

— David 'JoelKatz' Schwartz (@JoelKatz) August 11, 2026

Low Hash Power Stalls the BIP-110 Branch

Data from the BIP-110 dashboard at OCEAN showed the latest block on the minority fork at 961,633 as of Tuesday, approximately 59 hours after that block was mined. While the endpoint displayed several exahashes per second of mining power, a third block had yet to materialize.

The stall stemmed from a lack of consensus for the change within the broader Bitcoin network. Only 51 of the most recent 2,016 Bitcoin blocks had signaled support for BIP-110, representing just 2.53% — far below the 55% threshold required under the proposal's framework.

After the fork, the majority chain continued producing new blocks normally. The BIP-110 fork, however, continued mining at the same difficulty level but with a fraction of the hash rate, causing block generation to slow dramatically and the branch's recorded height to plateau.

Bitcoin Knots stated that the network was under attack and discouraged users from downgrading or altering their software, warning of the risk of receiving false confirmations from blocks deemed invalid under their protocol rules (@BitcoinKnots, X).

Bitcoin Knots Floats a New Proof-of-Work Algorithm

Even though the BIP record was closed, Bitcoin Knots raised the possibility of changing the mining algorithm for its minority branch. The project announced that a new proof-of-work algorithm selection was scheduled for 14:00 UTC on August 11, to be conducted through a deterministic random process within its Discord strategy channel (@BitcoinKnots, X).

At the time of publication, this selection process had not yet taken place, and no alternative algorithm had been announced beyond the original BIP-110 proposal, which remained closed.

Implementing a different algorithm would force the minority branch to adopt a proof-of-work scheme distinct from Bitcoin's current SHA-256-based algorithm, creating an entirely separate network path.

Luke Dashjr Removed from BIP Editors List

The controversy also rippled through Bitcoin's governance structures. Bitcoin has no central authority; protocol changes historically require rough consensus among developers, miners, and node operators, and disputes over unilateral action have led to chain splits in the past. On August 10, Jon Atack merged a GitHub pull request removing Luke Dashjr — the maintainer of Bitcoin Knots, an alternative full-node implementation — from the list of BIP editors. The action followed concerns raised by Mark Erhardt regarding Dashjr's involvement with BIP-110.

Atack stated that Dashjr had already been stripped of editor and administrative privileges before the list was updated. Dashjr denied the claim and characterized the move as an abuse of power.

As of the latest data from OCEAN, the Bitcoin Knots branch remained stalled at block 961,633, with no new mining algorithm yet released.