Hello everyone,
I have been following this discussion on BIP-110 and I would like to offer a perspective that looks at the historical evolution of our network roles to help frame why this debate feels so high-stakes for both sides. My viewpoint is primarily informed by a computer science perspective that applies Systems Theory and System Dynamics. This approach views all IT systems, including technology, organizations, and the people within them as inherently interconnected and multidisciplinary. Although I am a human, I am utilizing an AI assistant to help me with grammar and to efficiently locate information within the BIPs repository. This allows me to gain a broader perspective on the evolutionary aspects of Bitcoin code and protocols. I apologise if my post looks more like an academic essay.
When we look back at the earliest days of Bitcoin, the topology of the network was much simpler because a single machine usually handled every task, meaning the same person was responsible for mining, storing the entire blockchain, and managing their own wallet in one place.
However, as the protocol matured, these roles became highly specialized. Miners moved toward industrial hardware and pools, a transition formalized by BIP 22 and BIP 23 (getblocktemplate), which decoupled block construction from the act of hashing. Simultaneously, users moved toward specialized wallets BIP 39 introduced human-readable mnemonics for easier key management, while BIP 37 (Bloom Filters) and later BIP 157/158 (Compact Block Filters) enabled light clients to function without storing the full chain. This evolution left a very specific and crucial burden on the shoulders of the voluntary node runners who continue to store the blockchain in a decentralized way without any direct monetary incentive. While BIP-110 claims to protect these volunteers, it does so by attacking the very technical flexibility provided by BIP 341 (Taproot), potentially 'kneecapping' Bitcoin’s future as a smart contract platform.
I think the primary motivation behind a proposal like BIP-110 is a desire to protect these voluntary participants from what some perceive as a breach of the social contract. Proponents like BitcoinMechanic argue that Bitcoin should strictly function as money and that the current trend of using the chain for general file storage, such as large inscriptions or BRC-20 tokens, creates an unfair resource burden on those who keep the network decentralized. By limiting output scriptPubKeys to thirty-four bytes, capping OP_RETURN sizes to eighty-three bytes, and removing certain functions like OP_IF inside Taproot, the goal is to prevent the chain from being bloated by data that doesn't serve a strictly monetary purpose. This is often framed as a power struggle where the independent node runners must assert their authority over large-scale industrial players and miners to define what constitutes a valid block.
However, as we analyze this through the lens of the official BIP repository and technical history, we have to consider the risk of significant collateral damage. One of the most concerning points raised here is that such a radical tightening of the rules could effectively kneecap the sophisticated smart contract functionality we gained through the Taproot upgrades. If we strictly limit script sizes and witness elements to two hundred and fifty-six bytes as proposed, we might accidentally invalidate complex scripts that were perfectly valid under the rules of BIP 341 and BIP 342. This leads to a terrifying scenario where someone’s bitcoins, perhaps held in a long-term timelock or a complex multisig arrangement, could be destroyed or made unspendable because the new consensus rules treat their historically valid transactions as invalid.
To understand the gravity of this, we can look at a similar debate currently raging regarding quantum resistance. As quantum computing advances, some have proposed that we must force an update to the code to protect the network from "
Q-Day". This would not only destroy Bitcoin but also any systems based on asymmetric cryptography and public key infrastructure. Because many early coins, including the roughly one million coins attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto, are stored in older pay-to-public-key formats, they are uniquely vulnerable to a quantum computer that can derive a private key from a known public key. Some in the community have gone so far as to suggest that we should "burn" or destroy these dormant coins, essentially confiscating them via code to prevent a future quantum attacker from crashing the market.
Critics of these "burn" proposals argue that such a move would be a state-like intervention that destroys the core promise of Bitcoin: that your property is yours alone and cannot be seized by a majority vote. They point out that even if the goal is "security" or "network health," the moment we decide whose coins are valid based on our current fears, we have abandoned Bitcoin’s neutrality. BIP-110 feels like a smaller version of this same dilemma. By deciding that certain transaction data is "spam" and invalidating the scripts that contain it, we are essentially performing a selective confiscation of the utility people bought into when they used those features.
We also have to be careful when we compare this to the 2017 user-activated soft fork. While the power of the node is a fundamental principle of Bitcoin's decentralized authoritarianism, there is a major difference between a community pushing for a change that expands functionality and one that seeks to retract it by force. If BIP-110 proceeds with a low activation threshold of only fifty-five percent, we risk a messy chain split that could leave users in a prisoner's dilemma, potentially causing the value of the network to fall off a cliff if the market loses faith in the immutability of our property rights. Even if we find certain uses of the blockchain to be parasitic or annoying, we have to weigh that frustration against the danger of giving any group the power to pass judgment over which transactions are worthy of being processed.
This discussion addresses the fundamental concept of self-sovereignty, a principle frequently summarized within the Bitcoin community as "my node, my rules," which grants node runners the authority to determine their own mempool policies. However, it is vital to acknowledge the necessity of information propagation across the network, particularly because many community members view Bitcoin through a financial lens rather than a computer networking perspective. To stimulate a broader debate on proposals like BIP-110, we can employ an analogy based on exchange order matching engines, where a "touch line" represents the exact point where bid and ask offers achieve agreement. This model defines the mempool as the "order book" of intent, while the "touch line" serves as the consensus point that transitions transactions into "historical data," mirroring the mechanics of agent-based market models with a central matching engine (Jericevich, Chang, and Gebbie, 2021).
From a miner's perspective, consensus is reached through the discovery of a valid hash, which must then be broadcast to the rest of the network to secure the ledger. The miner's role involves selecting the most lucrative offers with the highest fees, a task that becomes increasingly critical as the block subsidy decreases with every four-year halving event. Critics argue that adopting BIP-110 would radically kneecap Bitcoin's smart contract functionality and effectively destroy some people's bitcoins by invalidating transactions that were historically valid. If node runners begin to censor their mempools based on arbitrary data limits, they risk blinding miners to the very fee revenue required to sustain the network's security budget. Ultimately, the origin of this vital information is the mempool, and restricting it at the consensus level may lead to the capricious invalidation of property rights and the diminishing of Bitcoin's core value proposition.
This post was composed as an academic essay, and constructive peer review is therefore highly appreciated.
References:
Unchained (2026) With the Quantum Threat Imminent, Could Bitcoin Split Over Satoshi’s Coins?, YouTube. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dayUNyMhaEs (Accessed: 5 February 2026).
This video provides a deep dive into how quantum computing could specifically target legacy addresses like Satoshi’s and explores the controversial community debates surrounding whether to force-move or burn those coins.
Jericevich, I., Chang, P. and Gebbie, T., 2021. Simulation and estimation of an agent-based market-model with a matching engine. arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.07806.
This paper authors argue about asynchronous and event time in order matching engines.
Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (similar to RFCs although BIPs often include specific activation mechanisms, such as signaling thresholds, which have no equivalent in the RFC process)
https://github.com/bitcoin/bipshttps://bip110.org/
