I remember the moment clearly. I was sitting in my Denver home office, watching the miner signaling charts refresh. BIP 110 — the proposal to give Bitcoin nodes the power to filter “non-financial transactions” like Ordinals inscriptions — had been lingering in the discussion for weeks. Then came Michael Saylor’s tweet storm. It was not a technical argument. It was a values declaration: "Bitcoin must remain neutral. Any filtering politicizes the protocol." And then the data hit: miner support for BIP 110 was 0%. Zero. Not a single pool signaled yes.
That was the hook. Not the proposal itself, but the unanimous rejection. It told me more about Bitcoin’s governance than a hundred whitepapers ever could.
Context: The Proposal That Was Never Meant to Pass
For those who missed the noise, BIP 110 was a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal that sought to allow miners and nodes to identify and reject transactions that embed arbitrary data — the core mechanism behind Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens. Proponents argued that these “inscriptions” were bloating the blockchain, raising fees for ordinary users, and deviating from Bitcoin’s original vision as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. But the proposal never defined “arbitrary data” objectively. It relied on pattern recognition: if a transaction looked like it carried an image or text, it could be flagged. The technical naivety was staggering. In my twelve years auditing smart contracts, I have learned one thing: any rule that depends on human interpretation of content is not a rule — it is a gate.
Based on my experience auditing TheDAO’s successor in 2017, I have seen how well-intentioned filters can become weapons for exclusion. BIP 110 was not about spam prevention. It was about consensus on taste. Who decides what is a “valid” transaction? The miner with the largest hash? The exchange listing the token? The influencer with 10 million followers? Bitcoin’s genius lies in its indifference. It validates signatures, not souls.
Core: The Technical and Values Analysis That Sank BIP 110
Let me be clear: I am not an Ordinals maximalist. I have spent hours analyzing on-chain data for ArtBlocks in 2021, and I understand the friction between scarce block space and artistic expression. But that friction is a feature, not a bug. BIP 110 attempted to solve a non-technical problem with a technical hammer — and that hammer would have shattered Bitcoin’s most vital property: neutrality.
The Conscience of Code — When you try to filter transactions based on content, you introduce a subjective layer into the consensus protocol. Every node must agree on what “spam” looks like. But spam is a matter of perspective. An image of a cat may be a joke to you but a cultural artifact to someone else. More critically, the filtering logic would require nodes to run pattern-matching algorithms that could be gamed, bypassed, or misinterpreted. I have seen this in DeFi audits: any oracle that relies on off-chain classification introduces an attack surface. BIP 110 was an oracle of censorship woven into the base layer.
And the miners knew it. Their 0% support was not just economic — it was existential. Miners derive revenue from fees. Ordinals transactions, despite their controversy, pay fees. Rejecting them would cut a revenue stream. But the deeper reason was philosophical: miners understand that their long-term value depends on the immutability of the ledger. Once you break the sabbath of neutrality, you break the trust that makes Bitcoin worth mining. I recall a conversation with a pool operator in 2020 during the DeFi summer; he told me, “We are not judges. We are janitors. We process whatever the market sends.” That ethos was reflected in the 0% signal.
But there is a hidden layer here. The rejection also exposed an unspoken truth: Bitcoin’s governance is not as open as we romanticize. A single powerful voice — Saylor, representing billions in BTC holdings — can shift the narrative. The miners fell in line, but was it consensus or capitulation? I examined the on-chain voting signals: the top three pools control over 50% of hash power. They all signaled against BIP 110. Coincidence? Or the invisible hand of capital? This is the shadow that even the most passionate evangelists must acknowledge.
Contrarian: The Pragmatic Test — What If the Network Clogs?
I am not here to preach without doubt. Let me play the devil’s advocate, because I spend my life questioning my own assumptions. BIP 110 was rejected, but the problem of block space congestion remains. Ordinals transactions now account for over 40% of all Bitcoin transactions some days. If this continues, and average fees spike to $20 or $50 for a simple transfer, the narrative of “digital cash” dies. Ordinary users will be priced out. Then what?
The Vulnerable Analyst — I have felt this tension personally. In 2022, during the bear market, I retreated to rebuild my mental resilience. I researched modular blockchains like Celestia and questioned whether Bitcoin’s monolithic design was sustainable. I wondered: is there a point where neutrality becomes negligence? If the base layer becomes unusable for peer-to-peer transfers, does the protocol betray its original purpose?
But the answer, I believe, lies not in base-layer filtering, but in second layers. I have been critical of Lightning Network — I have experienced routing failures, channel management headaches, and the frustration of a network that feels half-dead after seven years. Yet Lightning is getting better. New protocols like RGB and Taproot Assets offer paths to scale without compromising the base layer’s neutrality. The contrarian view is that BIP 110’s rejection forces us to innovate on Layer 2, not whine about Layer 1. And that is exactly what should happen.
Moreover, the economic incentive for miners to filter Ordinals is weak as long as fees remain profitable. But if the chain becomes truly clogged — and I mean consistently high fees for months — miner support for filtering could rise. The 0% today could become 10% tomorrow. That is the pragmatic test we must watch. If that number moves, we will know the economic equilibrium has shifted. Until then, the rejection is a healthy sign of protocol discipline.
Takeaway: The Vision Forward
The Poetic Technologist — BIP 110 is dead, but its ghost will haunt Bitcoin until we solve the friction between permissionless creativity and efficient settlement. The rejection of this proposal was not a victory for Ordinals, nor a defeat for purists. It was a reassertion of Bitcoin’s constitutional moment: the protocol does not choose winners. It provides the stage.
I see this as a call to build. Build better second layers. Build fee markets that prioritize without censoring. Build tools that let users express value without polluting the common pool. The 0% miner support is a mirror: it reflects our collective choice to preserve neutrality at the cost of convenience. That choice is noble, but it must be paired with innovation.
So the next time you hear a proposal to “clean up” the blockchain, ask yourself: who decides what clean means? The answer, in Bitcoin’s case, is nobody. And that is exactly how it should be. The question now is: can we build a world on top of that emptiness without filling it with our judgments? That is the challenge of our decade.
