Enchancment Proposal 110 (BIP-110) reinvigorated a debate that grew among the many Bitcoin developer and consumer group all through 2025: whether or not the community ought to enable non-financial makes use of or be restricted to monetary programs solely.
Due to this fact, this text examines 5 keys to understanding the battle surrounding BIP-110.
1) What’s BIP-110, what’s it for, and the way was it born?
A BIP is an ordinary doc for proposing adjustments and new options for Bitcoin. On this framework, BIP-110 seems as the following proposal. smooth fork (smooth fork) to restrict non-monetary use of the community, as reported by CriptoNoticias.
Its goal is to make use of Bitcoin as a digital cash system. Prioritize funds and funds Eliminates non-monetary makes use of (transactions meant to retailer arbitrary information akin to photos, textual content, and so forth.) competing for house throughout the block.
BIP-110 known as a “non permanent smooth fork to cut back information.” Created by nameless developer He works beneath the pseudonym Dason Ohm.
The proposal was initially referred to as BIP-444, however as soon as its code was built-in into the official Bitcoin repository, it was formally recognized as BIP-110.
On the time of this writing, this doc is in draft standing and signifies the next: is in early phases of improvement and would be the topic of energetic dialogue throughout the group.
2) How does BIP-110 work?
This proposal tightens node acceptance standards By means of strict validation guidelinesis particularly designed to cut back the propagation of arbitrary information on the chain.
This mechanism operates on the community coverage stage (node coverage) as a substitute of fully rewriting the protocol. Info visitors management.
From a sensible perspective, the proposal goals to stop the community from getting used to insert information for non-monetary functions with out affecting regular Bitcoin transactions between customers. The concept is to order house throughout the block for funds and settlements.
3) What downside is BIP-110 supposed to unravel?
BIP-110 was born as a response to: Some Bitcoiners assume that spam Transactions on networks, that’s, transactions that don’t pursue monetary goals. A lot of this visitors is opcode Protocols akin to OP_RETURN and Ordinals.
To critics of those makes use of, together with such arbitrary descriptions in Bitcoin will increase the scale of the chain and will increase the price of working nodes.
As a substitute, the builders of the reference consumer Bitcoin Core and their followers Defending and selling the liberty of use of Bitcoin. By Could 2025, nearly half of the commerce they weren’t economicalthis pattern continued till the top of that yr, as reported by CriptoNoticias.
BIP-110 warns that rising the OP_RETURN area to 100,000 kilobytes (kB) in Bitcoin Core model 30 (v.30) makes it attainable to embed massive quantities of non-financial information akin to photos and information. This capability raises the next considerations: Could include unlawful content materialbeing pressured to retailer such content material would expose node operators to authorized and moral dangers.
4) Dialogue on BIP-110: Ideas, Governance, Prices
The BIP-110 proposal has divided the group between these calling for technical cleanup and people involved about consensus vulnerabilities.
Journalist Hodronaut and Bitcoin group founder Maya Parboe encourage a name to motion. Each take Bitcoin Core insurance policies into consideration Allowed systematic abuse of block house by inscriptions.
Parbhoe argues that “ordinal numbers don’t belong in Bitcoin” and that ordinal numbers signify a vector of exploitation.
Analyst George Bodin additionally joined this place and launched a normative argument. He argues that unlawful and obscene content material harms node operators and node operators. have to be artificially costly.
A unique interpretation is supplied by the BitMEX staff. The evaluation agency mentioned Bitcoin Core didn’t promote controversial insurance policies; response was sluggish. They imagine that the present situation is because of miners and middleman providers like MARA Firm (MARA) facilitating the unfold of those transactions.
Adam Again, co-founder of Blockstream, I reject the thought of banning.spam«. In accordance with Again, stricter guidelines have the other impact, forcing attackers to cover information in additional advanced and costly constructions.
Political dangers additionally generate vital warnings. Developer Depraved warns: Failed activation try (in accordance with BIP-110) “Adjustment Capital Burn”. This reduces the group’s capacity to prepare mandatory adjustments sooner or later with out fragmenting the community.
In the meantime, Bull Bitcoin pockets founder Francis Pollio used historic classes to strengthen his imaginative and prescient for Depraved. For him, Bitcoin’s greatest energy is Nobody can arbitrarily change the foundations To resolve non permanent utilization points.
Bitcoin analyst Justin Bechler thinks so: million greenback bitcoin it relies upon Of the three parts:
- Concerning the reliability of its financial coverage.
- About his resistance to censorship.
- A community of nodes that enforces each.
If both get together is weakened, your complete argument loses its energy. Bechler provides: BIP-110 acts as a brief brake to get well 36% of block housewith out affecting monetary transactions.
dialogue assortment
- Mumbo’s hodronote: They push for BIP-110 to cease the usage of inscriptions and ordinals in the principle chain.
- Adam Again: He claims that technical limitations shift undesirable content material to extra pricey node cloaking strategies.
- evil: He warned that failure to activate would fragment the consensus and deplete the group’s capability for political coordination.
- Francis Pollio: He argues that the immutability of guidelines protects Bitcoin from governance seize and arbitrary adjustments.
- Justin Bechler: He estimates that this measure will get well 36% of block house by filtering non-financial transactions for one yr.
5) How does BIP-110 begin (or fail)?
BIP-110 We think about two attainable activation pathwayseach by clean forks (smooth fork)That’s, rule adjustments which might be appropriate with nodes that haven’t been up to date, no less than in a theoretical design.
- scheduled activation (Flag Day): For the principle monitor, the deadline is ready for 2026 (particularly when the block peak of 893,100 is reached). From then on, information restriction guidelines are robotically activated for upgraded nodes, and blocks containing prohibited information are ignored.
- Reactive activation and reorganization: Guidelines will be activated instantly if unlawful materials is detected. This might power a retrospective reorganization of the chain, invalidating already mined blocks containing such content material and making them completely unrecorded in Bitcoin historical past.
The authors acknowledge that, not like different smooth forks, this mechanism could trigger non permanent chain splits, as nodes that haven’t been up to date will proceed to just accept blocks that BIP-110 deems invalid.
Nonetheless, he argues that this threat is Is an appropriate value to stop the continued existence of unlawful content materialstrikes the dialogue from the technical to the normative and philosophical.
Moreover, the proposal features a one-year sundown clause, after which the rule will not be legitimate except the group decides to resume it.
Lastly, the rejection or non-adoption of BIP-110 isn’t depending on updates to Bitcoin Core, probably the most extensively used community consumer. Because the proposal not a part of that consumer.
Its implementation requires a node operator Voluntarily putting in the Bitcoin Knots software programthe consumer the place the proposer initiates the activation.
In that framework, BIP-110 will merely not be activated if a big variety of nodes resolve to not set up Knots or apply a smooth fork, emphasizing that BIP-110’s destiny is tied to the community’s social and operational consensus reasonably than to intensive improvement selections.
