Bitcoin’s consensus rules have historically treated valid transactions equally regardless of purpose. BIP-110 raised concerns that rules aimed at discouraging one category of transactions risked opening the door to future restrictions on others.
BIP-110 rejected
The manner in which the proposal sought approval was equally contentious. Bitcoin upgrades typically proceed only after overwhelming support has emerged across miners, businesses, wallet providers, and the wider ecosystem. BIP-110 instead revived the discussion around a user-driven activation approach, with upgraded nodes enforcing the new rules if predefined conditions were met.
Supporters saw it as a necessary protection if miners refused to act against what they considered abuse of block space. Opponents warned that attempts to introduce new consensus rules without broad agreement risked creating incompatible versions of Bitcoin, a scenario many veterans still associate with the divisive block size wars of 2017.
This is where BIP-110 fell short in winning support. Mining companies had little ingenuity to reject transactions that paid competitive fees, while institutional investors had no appetite for government battles.
Michael Saylor, founder of Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin said BIP-110 “turns a spam dispute into a consensus change that would invalidate some currently valid, fee-paying transactions.”
“That precedent is the danger,” he wrote on X on July 11. “We should save our energy for threats that really matter.”
