Bitcoin Improvement Proposal
BIP
110
How Bitcoin will adapt — or not — to the challenges of spam, governance, and quantum computing.
The question
Is BIP 110 about
spam on Bitcoin?
Or is it about how Bitcoin
ultimately evolves?
The real issue
It's not just spam
and Dick Pics on Bitcoin.
It's about whether Bitcoin can adapt to resist Quantum.
A little history
PR #32406
May 5, 2025
PR #32406 opened on Bitcoin Core GitHub — policy: uncap datacarrier by default. The default -datacarriersize changed from 83 bytes → 100,000 bytes.
June 9, 2025
PR #32406 merged into Bitcoin Core's master branch.
Oct 10, 2025
Bitcoin Core v30.0 released with the change.
"This legitimizes spam."
Community reaction to Core v30.0
Core maintainers merged a controversial policy change despite significant community opposition — without broad consensus.
The players
5 core maintainers.
One fateful merge.

Greg Sanders

Long-time Core developer. Proposed the BIP.

Gloria Zhao

27-year-old Core maintainer. Merged it in.

Samson Mow & Luke Dash Jr. opposed. Bitcoin Knots saw significant adoption increase.
BIP 110 timeline
Oct 24, 2025
Initial draft of the proposal published.
Dec 3, 2025
Assigned BIP 110 and accepted into the BIPs repository.
Jan 2026
First activation client released as a fork of Bitcoin Knots.
Today
26,000 reachable nodes. 16% signaling in favor of BIP 110.
Step back
What is Bitcoin, really?
  • Open-source software — no official version exists
  • Anyone can modify, compile, and run their own version
  • Bitcoin exists because tens of thousands of people choose to run software that broadly agrees on the same rules
  • A Bitcoin node is just a computer running Bitcoin software
The network today
100K+
Estimated total nodes
(public + private)
26K
Publicly reachable nodes
(can be connected to directly)
The rest run behind home routers, firewalls, VPNs, or Tor — still verify every block and transaction.
Support for BIP 110
16%
of 26,000 reachable nodes
currently signaling support
1%
of mined blocks signaling support
(miners can set a flag in blocks they mine)
Activation
55%
Voluntary threshold
for early lock-in.
Failing to reach 55% doesn't mean BIP 110 is dead — it means no early activation. The community can keep building support, revise the proposal, or pursue a future deployment.
Notable opposition
Michael Saylor
pushes back.
Without naming BIP 110, Saylor argued that protocol changes should require overwhelming consensus and warned that "bad ideas" can damage the network.
Key distinction
The word "consensus"
is key.

Core v30

Did not change Bitcoin's consensus rules — it changed Bitcoin's default network policy.

BIP 110

Doesn't introduce a new transaction policy so much as it introduces a process for the network to choose one.

Two things are for sure
We can't rely on Core
and 4 maintainers
to get us through Quantum.
We need multiple Bitcoin clients that are well maintained — not just Core and Luke Client.
BIP 110
This is how
Bitcoin
evolves.
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