What Is BIP-110?

The short answer

BIP-110 is a proposal to change Bitcoin's rules so that transactions can carry much less extra data — roughly, room for a payment and a short note, but not an image or a token collection. Supporters call that data spam and want it squeezed out. Opponents say fees already make spammers pay their way, and that changing Bitcoin's rules to police content is more dangerous than the spam itself.

As I write this, the proposal has almost no support from miners — under 1% of recent blocks are voting for it. But the argument around it says a lot about how Bitcoin works, which is why it's worth understanding even if it never activates.

First: what's a “BIP”?

BIP stands for Bitcoin Improvement Proposal. It's a numbered document anyone can write suggesting a change to how Bitcoin works. A BIP is not a law and not a command — nobody is in charge of Bitcoin, so a proposal only becomes reality if an overwhelming share of the network chooses to adopt it. Most BIPs are quietly technical. Once in a while, one touches a nerve.

BIP-110 touched a nerve.

What started the argument

Bitcoin's blockchain is a shared record that everyone running the software stores forever. It was designed to record payments, but with some cleverness you can tuck other data into transactions: pictures, text, even entire token collections. In recent years, techniques with names like Ordinals, inscriptions, and Runes made this easy — and popular.

To fans, these are digital artifacts etched into the most secure record ever built. To critics, they're graffiti: data that has nothing to do with money, bloating a ledger that every node operator on Earth has to store, forever.

Bitcoiners have argued about this for years — politely and otherwise. BIP-110 escalates the argument by proposing to change Bitcoin's consensus rules — the rules every participant enforces — to shut most of it out.

What BIP-110 would actually do

Published under a pseudonym in early 2026, the proposal sets seven rules that cap how much arbitrary data fits in a transaction. The technical limits (34 bytes for most new outputs, 83 for a data field called OP_RETURN, 256 for individual data pushes) translate to something simple: enough room to move money and attach a short note — not enough to embed a JPEG.

Two design choices matter. First, it's temporary by default — the rules expire about a year after activation unless renewed. Second, its activation path is unusually aggressive: if 55% of mining power signals support during a voting window (scheduled for August 2026, with activation possible around September 1), the rules lock in — and nodes enforcing the proposal would reject blocks that don't go along. That last part is why even some people who dislike spam oppose this particular proposal.

The case for it

Supporters — including the mining pool Ocean, which produces most of the yes votes so far — argue that Bitcoin has one job: being the world's most secure money. Every megabyte of pictures and tokens makes the blockchain heavier, which makes running a node harder, which slowly pushes Bitcoin toward being verifiable only by companies with big servers. Keeping the chain lean, they argue, protects the little guy's ability to verify their own money — which is the whole point.

The one-year expiry is their olive branch: try it, see if Bitcoin is better off, let it lapse if not.

The case against it

Opponents — including longtime developers like Adam Back — make three main arguments. First, it likely won't work: data smugglers adapt, and Back calls the proposal technically defective because determined embedders can route around every one of its rules. Second, fees already handle this — anyone stuffing pictures into blocks pays the same market rate as everyone else, so spam literally funds Bitcoin's security. Third, and most seriously: once Bitcoin changes its consensus rules to filter content someone dislikes, a precedent exists. Who decides what counts as spam next time?

There's also the split risk. Because BIP-110's activation design rejects non-complying blocks, a determined minority could end up forking themselves onto a separate, smaller chain — the kind of messy divorce Bitcoin has mostly managed to avoid.

Haven't we been here before?

Yes — and that history is oddly comforting. In 2017, Bitcoin went through the “block size wars,” a much bigger fight about how large blocks should be. It was loud, it was bitter, and Bitcoin came through it fine: the network kept running, nobody's coins went anywhere, and the disagreeing minority split off into an altcoin that faded.

Loud public arguments are not a bug in Bitcoin. They are what it looks like when a system with no CEO makes decisions. The hard part — getting almost everyone to agree before anything changes — is exactly what makes Bitcoin trustworthy.

What this means for you

Practically? Almost nothing. Your bitcoin is safe whichever way this goes. Your wallet keeps working. You don't need to vote, upgrade, or move anything. If the proposal activates, some kinds of transactions get restricted for a year. If it doesn't — which the current numbers suggest — the debate continues on X and in developer mailing lists, where it's been living rent-free all summer.

The one thing worth taking away is bigger than this proposal: nobody — not miners, not developers, not billionaires — can change Bitcoin's rules without convincing nearly everyone. You just watched that defense system work in real time.

Common questions