BIP-110 Could Split Bitcoin In New Soft Fork Fight, Jameson Lopp Warns

Jameson Lopp is escalating his criticism of BIP-110, arguing the proposal might set off a disruptive Bitcoin chain break up whereas failing to cease the habits it’s meant to curb. In a Feb. 23 post, Lopp frames the plan as a consensus-layer response to a coverage and cultural dispute round transaction “spam,” with dangers that reach nicely past mempool debates.

BIP-110 is pitched as a mushy fork led by Luke Dashjr that might briefly prohibit arbitrary knowledge in transactions. Lopp summarizes it as including seven new transaction-validity restrictions, together with limits on the place knowledge will be positioned and constraints on sure script habits, however says the tradeoffs are way more extreme than supporters admit. He calls the proposal “reckless and doomed to fail,” setting the tone for a publish that’s much less a technical explainer than a warning about governance and coordination danger.

Why Lopp Thinks The Activation Path Is Dangerous For Bitcoin

The core of Lopp’s argument isn’t just what BIP-110 modifications, however the way it tries to activate. He factors to the proposal’s 55% miner-signaling threshold for a user-activated mushy fork and says that low bar materially will increase the likelihood of two competing chains if the ecosystem just isn’t aligned.

He additionally stresses that BIP-110 nodes would reject non-compliant blocks outright, which raises coordination danger in contrast with mushy forks that previous nodes can proceed to observe with out enforcement conflicts.

Lopp is particularly pointed on the necessary activation posture at block top 961,632. In one of many sharpest passages, he writes: “This just isn’t a impartial, low-drama deployment posture. It’s dogmatic bullying. […] you can not fake it’s low-risk.” He ties that warning to a broader level: even when one views UASF ways as official, the proposal’s design will increase the chances of a messy failure mode if miners, exchanges, wallets, and infrastructure suppliers don’t converge in time.

He additionally pushes again on comparisons to 2017, noting that the UASF many individuals cite within the SegWit period by no means truly needed to run to the sting as a result of SegWit activated through miner signaling as a substitute. That distinction issues in Lopp’s framing, as a result of BIP-110 proponents are, in his view, leaning on a historic precedent that didn’t take a look at the precise state of affairs they now describe as manageable.

Another main part of Lopp’s publish targets the declare that BIP-110 has significant grassroots momentum. He argues that uncooked node counts (roughly 20% run Knots) are a weak proxy for consensus as a result of signaling is reasonable, node operation will be low-cost, and Tor addresses are “successfully zero” price to create at scale. He publishes a breakdown of reachable nodes and highlights the upper Tor-to-IPv4 ratio amongst Knots and BIP-110 signaling nodes as a cause to deal with node-count narratives cautiously.

On mining assist, Lopp says the hole is extra simple. At the time of publication, he writes miner signaling was “exactly […] zero,” and he cites public opposition from F2Pool whereas arguing miners have restricted incentive to again a proposal that might scale back charge income. That level reinforces his broader thesis that BIP-110 supporters are overestimating social signaling and underestimating the function of economically important actors in Bitcoin improve politics.

Lopp’s publish in the end reads as a warning that the quick situation just isn’t merely whether or not BIP-110 prompts, however what the marketing campaign reveals about the place Bitcoin’s inside dispute over neutrality, censorship resistance, and block-space utilization is heading. Even a failed fork push, in his framing, can nonetheless impose actual prices by forcing operators and companies to plan round low-probability however high-impact coordination failure.

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $62,791.