I was sitting in my Nairobi apartment, reviewing a draft of an educational module on Bitcoin governance for my platform, when the alert cut through the quiet hum of the ceiling fan. BIP-110 had forked the network at block height 961,632. Eight hours later, the new chain had produced exactly two blocks. I closed my laptop and walked to the window, staring at the city lights. The fork wasn't a violent split—it was a quiet death, like a candle snuffed out by a gust of wind that no one saw coming. In that moment, I realized that the story of BIP-110 was not about a technical failure, but about a deeper truth in the Bitcoin ecosystem: the code is not the law; the miners are.
Context: The Proposal That Couldn't Find a Home
BIP-110, or Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110, was a protocol-level change aimed at restricting non-financial data in Bitcoin transactions. Its proponents argued that Bitcoin's block space should be reserved purely for monetary transfers—a digital gold network, not a data storage layer. The proposal targeted Ordinals inscriptions, BRC-20 tokens, and any other use of the blockchain for data that wasn't strictly financial. It was a purity test, a return to the cypherpunk vision of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
The activation mechanism was a User-Activated Soft Fork (UASF), a controversial approach where nodes enforce a new rule at a predetermined time, regardless of miner support. Unlike the standard BIP-9 process, which requires miners to signal support (typically 95% over a difficulty period), UASF forces miners to choose between adopting the new rules or having their blocks rejected by the enforcing nodes. The threshold for BIP-110 was set at 55% miner signaling—already a lower bar than the usual BIP-9 consensus. But the reality was far bleaker: in the previous epoch, only 51 blocks out of 2,016 (a mere 2.53%) had signaled support for the proposal. Yet the enforcing nodes pushed ahead, activating the soft fork at block 961,632.
The result was a chain split. The main chain, representing the vast majority of hashrate, continued producing blocks normally, reaching height 961,681 within the same eight-hour window. The BIP-110 chain, meanwhile, stalled at block 961,633, with only two blocks mined—one of which was the fork block itself. The new chain's hashrate was so low that it averaged a block every four hours, compared to Bitcoin's ten-minute target. This was not a functioning chain; it was a ghost.
Core Analysis: The Technical and Human Anatomy of Failure
1. The Hashrate Reality Check
From my years auditing smart contracts and observing governance failures, I've learned that technical proposals are only as strong as the economic incentives behind them. BIP-110's failure is a textbook case of a UASF that ignored the fundamental power dynamic in Bitcoin: miners control the blocks. The new chain's hashrate was approximately 4% of the expected norm—two blocks versus the theoretical 48 in eight hours. This is insufficient for even basic security. A chain with such low hashrate is vulnerable to reorganization attacks, double-spends, and complete abandonment. It's not a viable network; it's a protest mural.
Ethics is not a feature; it is the foundation. But here, the ethics of 'pure money' collided with the practical ethics of miner livelihood. The miners chose survival. The proposal's supporters, likely a small group of ideological node operators, failed to understand that consensus is not a line of code—it's a relationship between hardware, energy, and economic reality. In my experience with the ZEIP-20 standardization working group, I saw how a small, dedicated team could push through technical improvements, but only when they had the backing of validators. Without that, even the most elegant code becomes a dead letter.
2. The Economics of Block Space
Bitcoin's block space is a scarce resource, and its allocation is determined by a fee market. Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens have generated significant transaction fees for miners, especially during periods of high activity. By restricting non-financial data, BIP-110 would have eliminated a substantial revenue stream for miners. The 2.53% signaling support likely came from ideological miners—perhaps those aligned with a purist vision of Bitcoin—but the vast majority saw the proposal as an attack on their income. Miners are rational actors; they will not voluntarily reduce their earnings.
This is not a new tension. I've seen it in the NFT space, where the OpenSea royalty surrender killed the creator economy for PFP projects. The same principle applies here: when the platform (or in this case, the protocol) removes the ability for creators to capture value, the ecosystem withers. BIP-110's supporters wanted to 'cleanse' Bitcoin, but they ignored the fact that Ordinals had brought new users, new developers, and new fee revenue to the network. Community over capital, always. But the community of miners, with their capital in ASICs, had the final say. The proposal failed because it was economically incoherent for the majority of stakeholders.
3. Governance: The Illusion of Code as Law
BIP-110's UASF is a classic example of the 'code is law' fallacy. The idea that a small group of node operators can enforce a rule change without miner consent is a governance hack, not a consensus mechanism. It mirrors the problem I've seen in DAO governance, where smart contract upgrade rights sit with a few multi-sig admins, undermining the pretense of decentralization. In Bitcoin, the multi-sig is the collective of miners, and they voted with their hashrate: they ignored the fork.
During the DeFi Library project, I learned that governance is not about writing rules; it's about building relationships. The BIP-110 supporters failed to engage with the mining community, to educate them on the benefits of the proposal, or to build a coalition. Instead, they attempted a unilateral takeover. The result was a lesson in humility: Bitcoin's governance is resilient precisely because it requires broad, multi-stakeholder consent. The UASF approach, by contrast, is a tool of coercion, not persuasion. It's a path to division, not progress.
4. The Impact on Ordinals and the Creator Economy
For the Ordinals ecosystem, the failure of BIP-110 is a reprieve. The immediate threat of a protocol-level ban on inscriptions has been removed. But the battle is not over. The same ideology that drove BIP-110 will likely resurface in other forms—perhaps through miner-led filtering, where miners choose to ignore transactions they consider 'non-financial.' This would be a softer, more decentralized censorship, but it would still threaten the creator economy on Bitcoin.
I remember the Savanna Voices NFT project, where we launched a DAO-governed royalty system to ensure artists received 70% of secondary sales. The initial hype was exhilarating, but it quickly faded as the speculative frenzy took over. The BIP-110 failure is a similar story: a small group's vision of a 'pure' Bitcoin clashing with the messy reality of market demand. The creators and users of Ordinals have won a battle, but they must remain vigilant. The silence between the blocks is not a sign of peace; it's a pause before the next move.
Contrarian Angle: The Hidden Victory of the Purists
Here's the counter-intuitive truth: BIP-110's failure might actually strengthen the case for future restrictions on non-financial data. The UASF approach was crude and failed, but the underlying desire to 'protect Bitcoin's purity' will not disappear. It may evolve into more sophisticated strategies, such as fee market manipulation or transaction filtering by miners. The failure could also embolden regulators, who may see the community's inability to self-police as a justification for external intervention. After all, if the protocol cannot prevent what some consider 'misuse,' then governments might step in to do it themselves.
Moreover, the failure of BIP-110 has exposed the fragility of the Ordinals ecosystem. It relies on the goodwill of miners, who could at any moment decide to stop processing inscription transactions. The economic incentives that currently favor Ordinals could shift if Bitcoin's fee market changes or if a new, more profitable use of block space emerges. The creator economy on Bitcoin is still in its infancy, and it is built on a foundation of sand. Walking away from the hype to find the soul is noble, but the soul of Bitcoin is not just money; it's the permissionless innovation that anyone can use. The contrarian truth is that BIP-110's death may be the beginning of a more subtle war, fought not with code but with economics.
Takeaway: Listening to the Silence
The silence between the blocks tells us more than the blocks themselves. BIP-110 is dead, but the question remains: who decides what Bitcoin is for? The miners have spoken, but the conversation is not over. Perhaps the real lesson is that governance is not a technical problem to be solved, but a human one to be lived. And in living it, we must remember that the code is not the law; the community is. As I build my educational platform, I think of the students who ask me, 'Who really controls Bitcoin?' The answer is not found in any whitepaper or GitHub repository. It is found in the quiet, persistent hum of mining rigs, in the choices of thousands of anonymous operators, and in the silence of a chain that produced only two blocks before giving up. That silence is a sound of resistance, a whisper that says: 'We are not ready for this change.' And perhaps, in that whisper, there is wisdom.