The debate has drawn reactions from Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr, Blockstream CEO Adam Back, Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor, Casa Chief Security Officer Jameson Lopp, and Bitcoin advocate Samson Mow.
What would BIP-110 change?Bitcoin transactions can include more than payments. They can also carry text, images, token metadata, and other information through transaction scripts and witness data.
Critics argue that BIP-110 would invalidate some transactions that are currently valid under Bitcoin's consensus rules and set a precedent for future protocol changes. In a February blog post, Jameson Lopp argued that BIP-110 would weaken two of Bitcoin's defining properties: censorship resistance and predictability.
Blockstream CEO Adam Back argued that Bitcoin's decentralized design prevents users from imposing their preferences on others and that its technical consensus process is intentionally resistant to change. While supporters are free to create their own fork, he wrote, "Bitcoin won't be joining it."
The debate began with Ordinals Mow urges consensus“During the Blocksize War, there was never this ‘if you're not with us, you're against us’ mentality on our side,” he wrote. “The small block camp never had to coerce anyone to join. We just all "got it" and were confident in our position.”
Mow wrote that he shares concerns about blockchain spam but opposes BIP-110 because he believes protocol changes require broad consensus. Mow also criticized Bitcoin Core developers for their handling of recent OP_RETURN policy changes, arguing that both sides contributed to escalating the dispute.
“The way they handled the OP_RETURN change was full of stupid mistakes, from banning people on GitHub to the ninja ACKs,” he wrote. “Any normal person could have predicted the reaction from the plebs. People store their time and value in Bitcoin. Anything that appears to threaten that will get people up in arms.”
