BIP110: The Bitcoin Softfork That Wants to Censor ‘Useless’ Data — and Why It’s Doomed to Fail

A Bitcoin softfork is stirring controversy among developers and network users. Known as BIP110, it claims to clean up the blockchain by eliminating transactions deemed “non-monetary.” But behind this ambition for technical purification lies a far more troubling logic.

Brandon Black, a well-respected Bitcoin developer, has taken a firm stand in the pages of Bitcoin Magazine to explain why this proposal is not only questionable on its merits, but genuinely dangerous to the founding principles of the network.

From an accelerated activation timeline and a lowered approval threshold to a logic of censorship dressed up as technical optimization, BIP110 encapsulates every tension running through the Bitcoin ecosystem in 2025.

BIP110: A Proposal That Dangerously Redefines What a Legitimate Transaction Is

BIP110, also referred to as the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork, starts from a straightforward observation: certain Bitcoin transactions embed data within their scripts that can be interpreted in multiple ways simultaneously — beyond a simple reading in Bitcoin Script. For its supporters, this constitutes a violation of the network’s principles, sufficient to justify restricting access.

The problem is that this logic introduces an unprecedented and arbitrary distinction between “monetary” and “non-monetary” transactions. Yet no such distinction exists anywhere in the Bitcoin protocol. Every transaction — whether it transfers satoshis or inscribes data via Ordinals — works in exactly the same way: it satisfies the conditions of a locking script, consumes inputs, and generates outputs. The size of the script has no bearing on the validity of the operation.

What BIP110 is actually proposing is the introduction of a form of editorial control over transaction content — a first in the history of the protocol. And it does so with a deployment timeline far faster than the last two major softforks, and a lowered activation threshold, which mechanically reduces the level of consensus required.

Censorship-Resistant or Censored Network? The Paradox at the Heart of Bitcoin

Bitcoin was designed as an open, censorship-resistant ledger. Anyone can submit a transaction, provided they pay sufficient fees to convince miners to include it in a block. It is precisely this property that sets Bitcoin apart from a simple bowling scoreboard — to borrow Brandon Black‘s analogy.

Accepting BIP110 means accepting that third parties — developers, miners, or a majority of nodes — can decide which transactions deserve to exist on-chain. This precedent carries serious consequences: if Ordinals can be excluded today in the name of “monetary purity,” nothing prevents the same logic from being applied tomorrow to other use cases deemed undesirable.

The parallel with freedom of expression is relevant here: a censorship-resistance right only has value if it also applies to transactions one disapproves of. A Bitcoin that only protects transactions “approved” by a majority is no longer a neutral Bitcoin — it is a controlled ledger. And from a node validation standpoint, Ordinals or OP_RETURN transactions are neither more nor less costly to process than a complex multisig: they are simply valid or invalid.

Why BIP110 Is Already Failing — and What That Reveals About Bitcoin

Beyond the technical arguments, it is the social dynamics surrounding BIP110 that expose its weaknesses. The proposal is struggling to build sufficient consensus within the Bitcoin Core developer community, and criticism is coming from a wide range of voices — from maximalists to on-chain application developers. That lack of cohesion is itself a telling signal.

Bitcoin has always evolved slowly and deliberately, with softforks built on years of discussion and testing. Taproot, activated in November 2021, required several years of work and a high activation threshold. BIP110 seeks to short-circuit that process — which in itself represents a break from the protocol’s governance culture.

The anticipated failure of BIP110 is not a victory for Ordinals or on-chain inscriptions — it is a confirmation that Bitcoin resists attempts to unilaterally redefine its fundamental rules. The deeper question this controversy raises is more profound: how far is the community willing to go to “protect” a network whose very strength lies in having no gatekeepers?