Michael Saylor, the man sitting atop the largest corporate Bitcoin treasury on Earth, just dropped nearly 4,000 words explaining why he thinks BIP-110 would fundamentally break what makes the network valuable.
The Strategy executive chairman published his critique on X.com Sunday, titling it with characteristic Saylor maximalism: “110 reasons” the proposal is flawed. The post argues that BIP-110, which would temporarily restrict non-monetary data like Ordinals inscriptions from the blockchain, violates Bitcoin’s core principles of neutral rules and permissionless access. By noon Eastern, the post had already pulled 879,000 views, 692 replies, and 852 retweets.
This isn’t just another Twitter spat between crypto personalities. BIP-110 represents the most significant protocol-level dispute in the Bitcoin development community since the Blocksize Wars of 2015-2017, when the ecosystem nearly split over whether to increase block sizes for scalability. That earlier conflict resulted in Bitcoin Cash forking off, and the scars from that era still inform how Bitcoiners approach any proposed change to the base layer.
What BIP-110 Actually Proposes
Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 landed in December 2025, introduced by a pseudonymous developer going by “Dathon Ohm” with backing from Ocean protocol founder Luke Dashjr. The proposal’s stated goal is straightforward: stop Ordinals inscriptions and other arbitrary data from consuming block space that proponents believe should be reserved for peer-to-peer cash transactions.
Ordinals, if you haven’t followed the drama, allow users to inscribe NFT-like data directly onto Bitcoin’s blockchain by embedding it in transaction witness data. Critics call this “spam” that bloats the chain and raises fees for legitimate monetary transactions. Supporters counter that any fee-paying transaction is legitimate by definition, and that Bitcoin’s permissionless nature means no one gets to decide what counts as a “proper” use.
The activation mechanism is notable: BIP-110 won’t flip on unless 55% of Bitcoin nodes validating blocks signal support across a block “period.” In the most recent period (number 475, spanning blocks 955,584 through 957,599), only 1% of blocks signaled in favor. That’s a massive gap from the 55% threshold, suggesting BIP-110 faces a steep uphill climb.
The proposal’s backers have emphasized two key points in response to critics. First, they argue BIP-110 wouldn’t cause a chain split because the restrictions are designed as a temporary one-year measure. Second, they note the fork wouldn’t invalidate fee-paying transactions over the long term. Dashjr and other supporters have characterized Ordinals-driven bloat as a “serious threat” requiring an imminent fix.
Saylor’s Core Objections
Saylor framed his opposition around what he called “neutral rules, hard consensus, open markets, and permissionless innovation.” The argument essentially boils down to this: once you establish that some transaction types can be filtered based on their content rather than whether they pay the required fee, you’ve created a precedent that undermines Bitcoin’s value proposition as censorship-resistant money.
That framing is tactically smart. Saylor isn’t dismissing the concerns about Ordinals bloat. He’s acknowledging the problem while arguing the proposed solution creates worse problems. It’s the kind of nuanced positioning that tends to resonate with Bitcoin’s more technically minded community, which generally distrusts anyone who dismisses opposing viewpoints outright.
Blockstream CEO Adam Back, one of the more respected figures in Bitcoin’s development history, has also criticized BIP-110. Back described the proposal as a “quest to police other people,” arguing that Bitcoin’s decentralization should mean “you can’t impose your views on others.” He called the proposal incompatible with BTC’s cypherpunk ethos of permissionless, censorship-resistant money.
The philosophical divide here is real. One camp believes Bitcoin’s purpose is narrowly defined: sound money, nothing more. The other camp argues that the market should determine what Bitcoin is for, and that any fee-paying transaction has earned its place in a block.
The Timing Paradox
Now for the interesting part. From a practical standpoint: this heated debate is happening while Ordinals activity sits at near all-time lows. Over the past month, fewer than 10,000 Ordinals have been inscribed daily on the Bitcoin blockchain. For context, the peak in August 2023 saw more than 400,000 daily inscriptions.
That’s a decline of roughly 97.5% from peak activity. You might reasonably ask: why are we having a governance crisis over a problem that seems to have largely solved itself through market forces?
The answer depends on which side of the debate you fall on. BIP-110 supporters would argue this lull is temporary, and the protocol needs structural protection before the next wave of inscription activity. Building defenses during a quiet period beats scrambling during an attack. Opponents would counter that the decline proves the market is self-correcting, and that there’s no need to add potentially dangerous complexity to Bitcoin’s consensus rules.
The data from Dune Analytics shows the inscription decline clearly, but it also reveals something else: the network handled the 2023 peak without catastrophic failure. Fees spiked, some users were priced out temporarily, and a lot of people complained. But Bitcoin kept producing blocks every ten minutes, just as it has for fifteen years. Whether that constitutes proof the system is robust or evidence that it barely survived depends entirely on your priors.
Strategy’s Unique Position in This Debate
Saylor’s intervention carries weight partly because of who he is: the chairman of a company holding the largest corporate Bitcoin position in existence. Strategy’s treasury strategy has made it a bellwether for institutional Bitcoin adoption, and Saylor himself has become perhaps the most prominent corporate advocate for BTC as a reserve asset.
But that same prominence creates complications. Strategy has faced significant pressure as Bitcoin’s price has fluctuated, including periods where the company’s stock traded below the value of its Bitcoin holdings. The company’s $4 billion capital plan announced earlier this month addressed investor concerns about its concentrated position, including potential Bitcoin sales to manage obligations.
Saylor’s stake in Bitcoin’s success is obvious, but so is his stake in Bitcoin remaining maximally flexible. Any protocol change that could reduce demand for block space, even demand Saylor might personally find aesthetically distasteful, theoretically impacts the value of his holdings. Critics will note this conflict. Supporters will counter that aligning incentives with Bitcoin’s success is a feature, not a bug.
The more interesting question is whether Saylor’s opposition will actually move the needle. BIP-110 requires 55% node support to activate, and it’s currently sitting at 1%. That suggests the proposal faces challenges far beyond Saylor’s objections. His post may be more about shaping the narrative around Bitcoin’s governance philosophy than about defeating a specific proposal.
The Blocksize Wars Echo
Anyone who was around for Bitcoin’s Blocksize Wars will recognize the rhetorical patterns emerging in the BIP-110 debate. The earlier conflict pitted those who wanted to increase Bitcoin’s block size (to allow more transactions per block) against those who believed keeping blocks small was essential to maintaining decentralization (since larger blocks require more resources to validate).
That debate generated extraordinary heat. Accusations of bad faith flew in both directions. Prominent developers left the project. Bitcoin Cash eventually forked away with larger blocks, while Bitcoin kept its 1MB base block size (though SegWit effectively increased capacity by restructuring how transaction data is counted).
BIP-110 echoes that conflict in several ways. Both involve fundamental questions about what Bitcoin is for. Both pit concerns about scalability and accessibility against concerns about maintaining the network’s core properties. And both generate the kind of tribal intensity that makes productive dialogue difficult.
But there are differences too. The Blocksize Wars featured roughly even camps with passionate advocates on both sides and significant uncertainty about which way things would break. BIP-110, at least based on current signaling data, has far less support. The 1% block signaling versus the 55% threshold suggests this is less a war and more a skirmish, with the outcome already largely determined by existing consensus.
Saylor’s intervention might be less about changing that outcome than about ensuring the right lessons get learned. His 110-point critique reads as a comprehensive document intended to become reference material for future protocol disputes. If BIP-110 fails (as current data suggests it will), Saylor wants the failure attributed to principled opposition rather than simple apathy.
The Permissionless Innovation Argument
At the heart of Saylor’s critique is a claim about Bitcoin’s competitive advantage: that its value comes precisely from its refusal to discriminate between transaction types. Traditional financial rails decide what transactions are allowed. Bitcoin’s promise is that any valid, fee-paying transaction gets processed without anyone’s permission.
This framing positions BIP-110 not as a technical improvement but as a fundamental betrayal of Bitcoin’s raison d’être. If node operators can vote to exclude certain transaction types because they don’t like what those transactions represent, the argument goes, then Bitcoin is just another censorship-capable system with extra steps.
The counter-argument from BIP-110 supporters is that maintaining Bitcoin’s original purpose as peer-to-peer cash sometimes requires actively defending against uses that degrade that functionality. They’d argue Ordinals inscriptions aren’t just another transaction type; they’re a parasitic use that exploits witness data structures in ways the original designers never intended.
Both sides can point to Satoshi’s original writings for support, which is part of why these debates generate such heat. Bitcoin’s founding texts are ambiguous enough to support multiple interpretations, and there’s no living authority to settle disputes definitively.
Market Implications and Second-Order Effects
Let’s think through what happens in the unlikely scenario that BIP-110 actually reaches its activation threshold. The proposal includes a one-year sunset clause, meaning the restrictions would automatically expire unless renewed. That creates interesting game theory.
Ordinals projects and their investors would face a year of uncertainty. Some might migrate to alternative chains (several Bitcoin forks and layer-2 solutions would happily absorb that activity). Others might wait out the restriction, betting on it not being renewed. The one-year window creates a strange limbo where the market can’t fully price in either permanent restriction or permanent permissiveness.
For Bitcoin as an asset, the signaling effects might matter more than the direct impacts. Institutional investors like the simplicity of Bitcoin’s governance (or lack thereof). The fact that meaningful protocol changes require overwhelming consensus and years of debate is a feature for allocators who hate surprises. A successful activation of BIP-110, even temporarily, might raise questions about governance stability that some allocators would find concerning.
On the other hand, those same allocators might appreciate a demonstrated ability to protect Bitcoin’s monetary function from perceived degradation. The narrative cuts both ways.
For node operators, BIP-110 support requires actively signaling, which means making a choice. The current 1% signaling suggests most operators either oppose the proposal or haven’t bothered to engage with it. That passive non-engagement might be the most important data point in the whole debate.
What Happens Next
BIP-110’s path to activation looks nearly impossible given current numbers. Moving from 1% to 55% node support would require a massive shift in sentiment that nothing in the current discourse suggests is coming. The more likely outcome is that BIP-110 becomes a footnote in Bitcoin governance history, remembered mainly as the debate that prompted Saylor’s 3,700-word treatise.
But the underlying tension won’t disappear. Ordinals activity could spike again. New inscription-like protocols could emerge. The question of whether Bitcoin’s blocks should accommodate arbitrary data alongside monetary transactions will resurface, probably multiple times.
Saylor’s post reads like a document written for those future debates as much as for the current one. By laying out 110 objections in systematic detail, he’s creating a reference library for the permissionless-innovation camp. Whether you agree with his conclusions, you have to acknowledge the tactical sophistication.
The Bitcoin community has always been fractious. The Blocksize Wars proved that passionate disagreement is part of the culture, not a bug. Saylor’s framing, that critics should “disagree vigorously without mistaking allies for enemies,” is an attempt to keep this round of disputes from generating the same lasting bitterness.
Whether that rhetorical restraint holds as the debate continues remains to be seen. But for now, the most powerful single voice in corporate Bitcoin has planted his flag clearly: BIP-110 is a bad idea, and here are 110 reasons why. The network’s node operators will ultimately decide whether they agree.
