Michael Saylor Opposes BIP 110, Citing Governance and Chain-Split Risks

What BIP 110 would change

According to the proposal described in Saylor’s essay, BIP 110 would run for roughly one year and introduce seven new restrictions aimed at data-embedding and related transaction behavior. Those limits would include tighter rules for OP_RETURN outputs, payload sizes, and some Taproot and Tapscript-related activity.

The proposal would grandfather in existing unspent outputs, but Saylor said some pre-signed workflows could still face fresh constraints once activation begins. His broader objection is that the softfork would use consensus rules to restrict activity that is disputed by some participants but still valid under Bitcoin’s current framework.

Concerns over activation and split risk

A central part of Saylor’s criticism focuses on how BIP 110 would be activated. He said the plan relies on a 55% miner-signaling threshold, rather than the 95% threshold associated with BIP 9. The mechanism also removes traditional timeout features and instead introduces a mandatory signaling period before lock-in.

In Saylor’s view, lowering the activation bar in this way raises the possibility of a chain split. He argued that miners are only one constituency in the Bitcoin ecosystem and that exchanges, wallets, and other users also play a role in determining whether a rule change is broadly accepted.

Fees, miner revenue, and policy alternatives

Saylor also questioned the economic logic of suppressing certain transaction types through consensus changes. As block rewards continue to halve over time, transaction fees make up an increasingly important share of miner income. He warned that limiting some categories of transactions could reduce fee revenue without clearly solving the underlying issue.

He further argued that similar effects might be achieved through existing Bitcoin Core policy tools, without altering consensus rules. In his account, even if BIP 110 were implemented, users might still find ways to circumvent restrictions on embedding data or using Bitcoin for non-payment purposes.

A governance precedent he says should be avoided

The essay’s broader theme is governance. Saylor said using a softfork to police contested but valid uses of Bitcoin would establish a precedent that could later be applied to other politically or commercially controversial transaction types. He described BIP 110 as a “Bitcoin Iatrogenic Proposal,” arguing that the intervention could do more harm than the conduct it is intended to address.

He ultimately called for a conservative approach at the base layer, maintaining that Bitcoin’s consensus rules should not be changed to settle debates over acceptable usage when less invasive tools may already exist.

The dispute around BIP 110, as presented in Saylor’s essay, centers not only on technical restrictions but also on who gets to shape Bitcoin’s rule set and by what threshold. His criticism preserves uncertainty over the proposal’s practical effects while framing it as a test of how far the network should go in using consensus changes to regulate behavior that remains valid under existing rules.