Saylor Pushes Back Against Bitcoin Soft Fork Plan

Michael Saylor (@saylor), executive chairman of Strategy, has come out firmly against Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 (BIP 110), urging the $BTC community to reject a plan he says would compromise the network's core principle of neutrality.

In an essay titled "110 Reasons BIP 110 Is a Bad Idea," Saylor argued that the network should not use consensus changes to decide which valid transactions deserve access to block space. He framed the piece as a critique of the proposal rather than its developers, saying he shares their underlying goals of affordable node operation and cheaper payments.

What BIP 110 Proposes

The proposal aims to implement a one-year temporary soft fork that would add seven distinct consensus restrictions, including capping data payload sizes and rejecting certain script executions. It would notably limit OP_RETURN to 83 bytes, cap several payloads at 256 bytes, and restrict certain uses related to Taproot and Tapscript. The goal is to keep the Bitcoin blockchain focused strictly on sound money rather than general-purpose data storage, with supporters framing it as an attempt to restore Bitcoin's original purpose as peer-to-peer digital cash.

One of the most debated parts of BIP 110 is that it changes how upgrades get approved. Instead of requiring 95% of miners to agree, it lowers that threshold to just 55%. Saylor argued that a lower threshold for a contested rule change raises the odds of a chain split, since miners represent only one group among holders, exchanges, wallets, and custodians who decide which rules a network ultimately follows.

Saylor's Case and the Path to August

Saylor argues that fee markets and relay policies, not consensus changes, should address so-called spam, warning that BIP 110 could restrict innovation, weaken miner incentives, and undermine Bitcoin's role as an open, permissionless financial system. He also raised concerns about a potential chilling effect on developers, noting that if today's target is data storage, tomorrow's target could be privacy tools, novel custody solutions, or corporate applications.

Saylor and Blockstream co-founder Adam Back have both opposed BIP 110, warning that enforcing disputed rules without broad support could create fork risks. Current miner signaling sits below 2%, with activation requiring 55% of blocks in a two-week difficulty period, or a mandatory signaling mechanism beginning around block 961,632, expected in August 2026. Saylor's public opposition, combined with Bitcoin Core's refusal to integrate BIP 110, makes the 55% threshold functionally unreachable unless major mining pools reverse course before that deadline.

Sources:
CoinDesk: Michael Saylor calls Bitcoin's new BIP-110 proposal 'a bad idea'
Bitcoin.com News: Saylor Rejects BIP 110, Warns Softfork Threatens Bitcoin's Neutral Rules
Crypto.news: Michael Saylor warns BIP 110 could threaten Bitcoin's neutrality