BIP-110 Misses Its Threshold

BIP-110 wanted something plenty of bitcoiners sympathize with: a one-year ban on the pictures, text and assorted junk that share block space with payments. To activate, it needed 55% of mined blocks to signal support — miners voting by flipping a bit in the blocks they produce. It got 2.54%. Every single signal came from one pool. That isn't losing a close vote. That's the network not showing up.

Three things sank it, and only one is the popular story. First, the packaging: the proposal's own guide steered supporters to one node software (Bitcoin Knots) and one pool's mining stack (OCEAN's DATUM) — what Saylor, its loudest opponent, called a vertically integrated marketing campaign wearing a rule change. Second, and worse, the design: the normal bar for a soft fork is 95% of blocks signaling; BIP-110 cut it to 55%, added a phase where its software force-rejects dissenting blocks, and removed the failure state entirely — a proposal engineered so it couldn't lose. Bitcoin exists specifically to say no to rules that can't be refused. Third, the verdict was broad: the biggest pools sat out, F2Pool opposed outright, and Adam Back summarized the mood — Bitcoin respectfully says no.

Here's the strange part: because there's no failure state, the rejection doesn't end it. Within days, BIP-110's software starts refusing every block that didn't signal — which is now 97% of them. Either almost nobody runs that software and the proposal quietly evaporates, or a small splinter coin forks off, with no protection against transactions replaying across both chains. Watch the blocks after 961,632. The vote is over; the consequences of designing out defeat are just arriving.

I keep writing that Bitcoin has no CEO and that changing it takes years of agreement nobody can shortcut. This week that machinery ran in public, and the lesson is precise: the 95% bar was never a rule you could lower. It was a measurement of how much agreement a change to shared money actually requires. Set your threshold wherever you like — the network sets the real one.