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- BIP 110 reached “complete” status on June 25, 2026, suggesting a one-year restriction on Bitcoin transaction data.
- The miner mention ratio for this proposal is 0.86%, which is well below the 55% threshold required for early booking.
- Mandatory signals start at block 961,632, and are expected around August 7, with full implementation targeted for September 1.
- Mining Pool Foundry has opened an internal vote that could change the outcome before the deadline.
Bitcoin proposed BIP 110, a one-year soft fork that would reimpose strict limits on the amount of arbitrary data miners can include within transactions, Apply to complete status on June 25, 2026. Weekend signals data puts miner support at just 0.86%, a small fraction of the 55% threshold needed for miners to lock in the rule early and ensure it takes effect. This deficiency is less significant than it might be elsewhere in Bitcoin’s governance history, because BIP 110 does not need miner approval to take effect. The mandatory signaling phase begins automatically at block 961,632, expected around August 7, and full execution follows on September 1 regardless of how many miners have signed up by then. Signaling works by having miners mark the blocks they produce to show whether they support the change, similar to a running vote that is recorded block by block.
The basic rule was written into existence itself
The proposal exists because of a decision made by Bitcoin Core months ago. In late 2025, core developers Removed 80 byte historical limit In OP_RETURN, a small Bitcoin text field allows users to attach a transaction to store non-payment data, such as a short note, image reference, or token record, with the goal of pushing data-heavy users toward prunable storage rather than approaches that permanently swell the UTXO pool, a ledger of unspent coins that each node must maintain. BIP 110 reverses this call and goes further, setting the maximum data push at 256 bytes and OP_RETURN itself at 83 bytes via seven distinct consensus constraints, new rules that every computer running Bitcoin software must follow. Node-level support ranges between 7% and 15%, and is almost entirely provided by users on Bitcoin Knots rather than Core. Knots has for many years been the client of choice for operators who want stricter limits on which transactions their computers accept and pass before miners confirm them, and this battle has turned it into a technical base camp for developers like Luke Dashjr and channels like Bitcoin University, who treat inscriptions, rankings, and runes as spam that inflates each full node operator’s storage costs.
However, none of these mining accounts have been settled. Foundry controls between 25% and 30% of the global hashrate, and opened an internal vote over the weekend to allow individual rig owners to direct their share of pool power toward signaling BIP 110. A meaningful swing from Foundry’s base could pull support well above 0.86% before block 961,632 arrives, though nothing guarantees that will happen in time.
| Date or block height | turn | condition |
|---|---|---|
| June 25, 2026 | BIP 110 reaches “Completed” status. | certain |
| Weekend of July 18-19, 2026 | Mining signals measured at 0.86% | Below the 55% threshold needed for miners to be approved early |
| Cluster 961,632 (~August 7, 2026) | Mandatory signal starts (enforced by node software, not by miner votes) | Automatic, independent of support miners |
| September 1, 2026 | Full implementation goal | On hold |
A timeline outlining BIP 110 milestones from completion in June through implementation in September 2026.
The Ordinals Camp answers with convenient DOG placement rules
Ordinal advocate Leonidas proposed a counter on July 16 and 17: placing DOG, an alternative core client that relaxes local relay policy instead of tightening consensus rules, allowing transactions near the full block size and lowering the dust limit to 1 satoshi. Proponents say this frees up roughly $25 million in bitcoin that currently falls below the dust limit, which is the smallest payment size a node will bother to forward because the fees for transferring it would cost more than the payment itself. The important distinction here is structural. DOG mode only changes the memory pool, the waiting room where unconfirmed transactions reside before a miner picks them up, and the relay policy a node uses to decide what to pass to other nodes. It leaves the rules of what makes a block valid entirely alone. This means that DOG mode only needs one cooperating miner willing to include the relevant transactions, rather than the network-wide agreement required by BIP 110.
| face | BIP 110/Bitcoin node | Doggy style |
|---|---|---|
| Type of change | Consensus rule (network level) | Local settings on individual nodes |
| OP_RETURN cover | 83 bytes | Unrestricted, per Core v30 |
| Dust limit | Without change | Cut into 1 satoshi |
| Activation requirements | Node adoption at the network level | One miner is ready |
Consensus comparison table and policy differences between BIP 110 and the alternative DOG mode client.
Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, spent the weekend explaining the negative case. If nodes running under BIP 110 rules start rejecting blocks as soon as mandatory execution arrives, while miners without majority support continue mining under the old rules anyway, the network splits into two chains that stop recognizing each other’s blocks. Buck described the would-be loser as a “Pompeii chain,” a minority network frozen in the moment of division, and mocked BIP 110 on X supporters for failing to rally real financial support behind the effort.
MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor took the opposing position to the extreme in a weekend article titled “110 Reasons BIP-110 is a Bad Idea“His argument is that money can’t distinguish between valid transactions and spam by design, and encoding that distinction into consensus gives developers a tool for censorship. He warns that this tool could be implied later in a company’s privacy features or custody arrangements once the precedent is in place. He pairs it with an economic caveat — suppressing data-intensive transactions drives down demand for fees precisely as block subsidies, the fixed reward that miners earn per block, according to a predetermined schedule, continue to shrink, pushing miners to rely more heavily on More on fees to stay profitable.
Seeking Alpha lowered its near-term Bitcoin forecast from aggressive buy to tactical buy over the weekend, citing governance risks associated with the August deadline rather than any shift in the longer-term monetary situation. MicroStrategy alone owns 843,775 BTC, and treasury firms in this position value Bitcoin precisely for a ruleset that doesn’t move without overwhelming consensus — activating a soft fork on subsidizing miners of less than 1%, simply because the nodes enforce it regardless, is exactly the governance uncertainty that this type of holder has avoided since the Blocksize Wars of 2017. What happens next depends on whether Foundry voting closes before block 961,632 and whether adoption Knots will exceed its current 7% stake to 15% in the remaining weeks.
