Adam Back and Michael Saylor oppose BIP 110 as fork risk grows

Blockstream co-founder Adam Back and Strategy founder Michael Saylor have publicly opposed BIP 110, a proposed temporary soft fork for Bitcoin. A Wu Blockchain post summarized their comments on July 12. Back said the plan attempts to police transactions that other users choose to send. He argued that this approach conflicts with Bitcoin’s decentralized and permissionless design.

Back also warned that supporters could create a separate chain if they enforce rules without broad agreement. Saylor made a similar case in his public statement. He said, “BIP 110 turns a spam dispute into a consensus change” that would reject some transactions that Bitcoin currently accepts. Saylor called that precedent “extremely dangerous” and said developers should focus on larger threats.

What BIP 110 would change

The official BIP 110 specification calls it the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork. It would apply extra consensus rules for about one year. These rules would restrict large data fields, some Taproot features, and several methods used to place images or other files inside transactions. The proposal keeps OP_RETURN outputs within an 83-byte limit and restricts several payloads to 256 bytes.

The proposal says these limits would reduce data storage on Bitcoin and keep the network focused on money. It exempts UTXOs created before activation, so existing outputs remain spendable under the old rules. Supporters say the measure would reduce storage demands on node operators. Critics say fee-paying users should decide how they use block space.

Luke Dashjr keeps backing the proposal

Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr continues to support BIP 110. A July 6 crypto.news report said he rejected calls to withdraw it and stated, “It’s too late to cancel BIP110.” He argues that Ordinals, Runes, and similar uses place non-financial data on Bitcoin and raise the long-term cost of storing and serving the blockchain.

Earlier crypto.news report covered Back’s earlier response to supporters who claimed discussion channels had blocked the proposal. Back rejected that claim and said many participants had already reviewed the plan. The report found low node support and no clear backing from a major mining pool at that stage.

Miner support remains far below the threshold

BIP 110 uses a modified activation process. Miners can lock it in by signaling support in 1,109 of 2,016 blocks, equal to 55%. The specification sets mandatory signaling before block 963,648 and activation at block 965,664, expected around September 1, 2026. The temporary rules would then remain active for about one year.

Current support remains far below that level. Reporting published July 12 said miner signaling stood at zero in the active period and had never exceeded about 1% in earlier periods. No major mining pool had supported the proposal. Without broad adoption, nodes enforcing BIP 110 could follow a minority chain while other nodes continue accepting existing transaction rules.

Exchanges, wallets, miners, and node operators now face an August planning window. They must decide which software and rules they will support before the mandatory signaling period. Market participants can track centralized exchange reserves through DeFiLlama’s CEX dashboard, though those figures do not measure Bitcoin consensus support. The BIP 110 outcome will depend on software adoption, miner signaling, and user decisions across Bitcoin.