A single BIP number — 110 — and a single voice from a billionaire. In crypto, these ephemeral signals can feel like noise. But this one is different. It's a pressure test on the most sacred principle of the most decentralized network: that Bitcoin must remain a neutral arbiter of value, not a moral filter for content.
Over the past week, the narrative circulated: Michael Saylor, chairman of MicroStrategy and the industry’s most visible institutional bull, opposed BIP 110. The proposal, in essence, would introduce a mechanism to selectively filter transactions — specifically, those carrying data-heavy inscriptions, like Ordinals. Saylor framed his opposition as a defense of Bitcoin’s core value: neutrality above all. “We must not politicize the rules,” he stated. “The network does not judge the purpose of a transaction.”
But behind this seemingly simple statement lies a complex anatomy of power, incentives, and the very definition of what Bitcoin should become. I've witnessed similar battles before — in 2017, when I audited fifteen ICO whitepapers and found Gnosis’s oracle model centralizing what should have been decentralized prediction. That era taught me that code is never just code; it's always a contest of visions. BIP 110 is no exception.
Context: The Ordinals Experiment and the Filter Fetish
BIP 110 — the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal in question — aims to give miners and nodes the ability to flag and reject transactions that contain non-financial data. Its proponents argue that Ordinals inscriptions, which embed art, text, or even entire files into Bitcoin’s UTXO set, bloat the blockchain and degrade the core function of a currency settlement layer. They propose a form of “content-aware” filtering: nodes would be programmed to recognize patterns (e.g., large data envelopes) and treat those transactions as invalid.
To be clear, this is not a minor tweak. It would require a soft fork at minimum, and potentially a hard fork if nodes diverge on the definition of “non-financial data.” The proposal has been met with a staggering 0% miner support. Zero. Not one mining pool — not F2Pool, not AntPool, not ViaBTC — signaled in favor.
This isn’t surprising if you understand miner economics. Ordinals transactions, whether you love or despise them, have become a meaningful source of fee revenue. In the past year, inscription-related fees have accounted for an average of 5-10% of total block rewards during high-traffic periods. For miners, that’s real income. Filtering them out means leaving money on the table. But there’s a deeper reason for that 0% figure: miners are not just profit-seeking machines. They are also guardians of Bitcoin’s longest-standing consensus principle — that every valid transaction, regardless of its content, is equal under the rules. Once you start discriminating, you introduce subjectivity. And subjectivity is the mother of all forks.
Core: The Moral Hazard of Neutrality
Saylor’s opposition is not merely about preserving income streams. It is about preserving a theological position. Bitcoin’s value proposition rests on a foundation of “trust no one. verify everything.” That verification must be algorithmic, not political. If the network begins to categorize transactions as “good” or “bad” — even if the criteria are purely technical — then every future debate becomes a battle over where to draw the next line.
“Gold is heavy. code is light.” That’s my own mantra, and it applies here. Gold’s neutrality is physical; you cannot stop someone from melting a bar. Code’s neutrality is fragile; it depends on an unbroken consensus that the rules are fixed. BIP 110 attempts to make code heavy — to give it the ability to judge. But code’s lightness is its strength. It can be upgraded, but only with overwhelming consensus. Here, there is none.
I saw this fragility firsthand during the Soulbound Berlin event I organized in 2021. We created non-transferable tokens to encode identity without speculation. Within hours, 90% of participants found a way to sell. My moral filter — “Soulbound is sacred” — was torn apart by human greed. Bitcoin’s neutrality is its own Soulbound token. The moment you try to enforce a purer vision, you risk breaking the very trust you seek to protect.
Contrarian: Neutrality as a Privilege of the Powerful
But let’s be cautious — and contrarian. Is the current “neutrality” truly neutral, or does it favor those who already dominate? Saylor, holding over 200,000 BTC, benefits from a network that processes all transactions without discrimination. That same network also processes ransomware payments and mixer tumbles. By defending the status quo, he is defending a structure where large holders have the most to lose from any kind of rule change. The 0% miner support is convenient for him: it echoes his voice.
Furthermore, the Ordinals frenzy itself is not a perfectly neutral market. It consumes block space, drives up fees, and effectively crowds out small users who want to make simple transfers. The so-called “free market” for block space is actually a bidding war where wealthy creators and collectors win. Filtering could be seen as a way to protect the utility for the many, not just the few. But the mechanism — content-specific censorship — is a poison pill. The cure is worse than the disease.
I recall a conversation with a MakerDAO developer during DeFi Summer 2020. We built a governance simulation model and found that even with decentralized voting, whale power dominated outcomes. “Neutrality” in protocol design often translates to “the strong survive.” Bitcoin’s neutrality is no different. It is a powerful myth, but one that requires active maintenance against the very forces of capital that now defend it.
Takeaway: Summer Fades. Builders Remain.
The BIP 110 saga is not over. It will return every time mempool fees spike. But for now, the outcome is clear: the 0% miner signal, combined with Saylor’s high-profile defense, has buried this proposal under the weight of inertia. That inertia is Bitcoin’s true strength. It resists change so aggressively that only the most compelling upgrades — like Taproot or SegWit — survive. BIP 110, an attempt to introduce moral engineering into a neutral protocol, failed the basic test of incentives.
What remains is the builder’s task: to resist the temptation to purify the network. Noise is cheap. signal is rare. The signal here is that Bitcoin’s governance, though flawed, still rewards the status quo — and that status quo is a permissionless, indiscriminate ledger. As someone who has built communities around that idea, I know how hard it is to maintain. But every time we win a battle like this, the network becomes a little more resilient.
Summer fades. Builders remain. And the faithful will continue to verify, not trust.
