BIP-110: Saylor and Back Reject Bitcoin's Ordinals Filter
Soft fork BIP-110 would choke Ordinals on Bitcoin. Saylor and Adam Back line up against the filter as miner support stays below one percent.
Bitcoin's twelve-year-old block-space feud is back. At its center sits BIP-110, a proposal that would restrict non-financial data on the chain for twelve months: in practice, a filter aimed squarely at Ordinals and inscriptions. Over the weekend Michael Saylor and Blockstream co-founder Adam Back came out swinging against it. With BTC around $63,845, the fight is politics, not a price catalyst. But it cuts straight into Bitcoin's fee economics.
What BIP-110 Does
The measure tightens limits on OP_RETURN and other data-carrying methods, pitched as a way to refocus the chain on payments. It would activate through a user-activated soft fork, where nodes enforce the rule whether or not miners agree, set at a 55% miner-signaling threshold rather than the usual 95%. The mandatory signaling window lands near block 961,632, projected for early August, with activation targeted around block 965,664 near September 1.
The problem for backers: adoption is nowhere. Miner support sits below 1%, and node uptake is in the low single digits, almost all of it running Bitcoin Knots, the alternative implementation.
Why the Heavyweights Say No
Saylor argued there are "110 things more dangerous to Bitcoin than spam," insisting the network has "no spam problem." His objection is economic: BIP-110 would retroactively invalidate fee-paying transactions, an intervention that erodes the protocol's neutrality. Back, whose hashcash design is cited in Satoshi's white paper, put it more bluntly: Bitcoin "respectfully says no."
Underneath is the old question of who sets Bitcoin's rules. A UASF with a 55% bar and no broad node base carries chain-split risk, the same ghost the 2017 block-size wars left behind.
The Trade
For traders, the near-term read is calming. With effectively zero miner backing, a forced activation looks unlikely, so split risk is low. The structural angle matters more. Inscriptions and data transactions now fund a growing slice of miner revenue post-halving. A filter would cut that demand and thin out the fee market, a negative for the chain's long-run security budget. The most prominent bulls knocking the proposal down keeps that fee market intact. The real tell comes in early August, when the signaling window reveals just how isolated the Knots camp really is.