Bitcoin's BIP-110 Data-Limit Fork Nears August Deadline With Miner Support Below 1 Percent

Bitcoin's dispute over what its blockspace is for has reached a decision point. BIP-110, a proposed one-year soft fork that would cap the arbitrary data a transaction can carry, faces an August activation deadline, and the mining industry is split on whether to support it. Foundry Digital, one of the largest mining pools, said it will let its clients vote on whether to signal for the change.

The proposal, formally the Reduced Data Temporary Soft Fork, would limit the size of new transaction outputs and OP_RETURN fields to curb the embedding of images, tokens and other non-monetary data on the chain, a practice that grew with Ordinals inscriptions, BRC-20 tokens and Runes. Supporters argue the data burdens node operators and dilutes Bitcoin's purpose as money. Opponents, including Strategy's Michael Saylor, have called it counterproductive, since paying customers can still buy the blockspace.

Jason Hughes, vice president of development and engineering at Ocean Mining, argued the effort is on track to fail, noting node signaling of 7 to 15 percent and hashrate support under 1 percent, well short of what a soft fork needs. Activating a rule change that miners have not adopted risks a chain split, in which incompatible versions of Bitcoin diverge.

The episode is a live demonstration of Bitcoin's deliberately high bar for consensus change. No single party can impose a rule, and a proposal without broad miner and node support does not activate, whatever its merits. That friction is intentional, not a defect.