According to external media, a bitcoin improvement proposal called BIP-110 is bringing developers, miners, businesses and users back into the governance debate. The proposal sought to tighten the partial consensus rule and limit the inclusion of non-payment information such as pictures, text and token metadata in transactions. Proponents felt that this would help to reduce “spam data”, while opponents feared that it would invalidate some of the transactions currently in force and trigger a new forklift risk.
What's the proposal to change?
BIP-110 is part of the soft fork programme, with a focus on limiting the way in which several common categories of data are written. According to the proposal, most of the new trade output will be limited to 34 bytes, OP RETURN output ceilings will be restored to 83 bytes, some witness element ceilings set at 256 bytes, and some Taproot usages that are often used in inscriptions will be temporarily tightened.
This means that the range of information that can be carried by a bitcoin transaction will be compressed. Over the past few years, Ordinals and inscriptions have directly written pictures, texts, videos, etc. into the Bitcoin chain, leading to NFT-type asset and token metadata activities, and have again made the issue of whether Bitcoin only pays for the service.
Division of support and opposition
Proponents argued that the proposal would help to reduce chain congestion and irrelevant data and strengthen the positioning of bitcoin as a currency network. Opponents, on the other hand, argue that the question is not whether it is against the motto, but rather that it is not by changing the consensus rule to deny a transaction that was valid and paid for.
Casa Chief Security Officer Jameson Lopp has previously stated in his blog that BIP-110 may weaken two key features of Bitcoin: predictability and censorship. His core view was that once the agreement began to sift out “unwelcome” transactions on a subjective basis, the perception of the “no need for permission” of the outside world would be weakened.
Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman of Strategy, also objected to the proposal on X. In his view, there were many more risks to Bitcoin than so-called garbage data, and it was a truly alarming precedent to escalate the debate into a consensus layer.
Miner support is still low.
The proposed mandatory signal period for BIP-110 will start in August. However, according to the proposed monitoring panel, only about 1 per cent of miners currently express their support, and there is still a clear gap from a broad consensus.
Chief Executive Officer Adam Back of Blockstream stated that the decentrized design of Bitcoin would not allow either party to impose its preferences on other participants. He believed that if supporters insisted on moving forward, they could organize their own forks, but that did not mean that the Bitcoin main chain would follow.
This debate dates back to early 2023 when Ordinals came online. The protocol, which was launched by the developer Casey Rodarmoor, uses the features of SegWit and Taproot to write pictures, text and videos to each individual hearing. Proponents view it as a bitcoin original digital asset experiment, while critics view it as a chronic seizure of cyberspace.
Differences have touched the way of governance.
Samson Mow, the Bitcoin Advocate, wrote on X this week that bitcoin participants should be seen more as “coalition” than as “community” where there must be a consensus. In his view, developers, miners, companies, educators and users all played different roles in the network and governance disputes should not turn into opposition.
He also mentioned that the treatment around OP RETURN had already fueled emotions. For many long-term holders, any move that appears to affect the way in which assets are stored or the neutrality of the network quickly triggers a strong rebound.
This is why the BIP-110 dispute continues to expand. On the face of it is a discussion of the inscriptions and the data on the chain, and what is essentially involved in defining “reasonable transactions” and the extent to which Bitcoin should retain programmable space in the future.