A ghost protocol is haunting Bitcoin. BIP-110, a relic from the Blocksize War era, has entered its mandatory signaling phase—and less than 3% of miners are playing along. For those who remember the 2015-2017 debates, this is a flashback to a time when the community was split between 'node sovereignty' and 'miner consent.' For the newer generation of Bitcoiners, this is a wake-up call: the governance of the world's most decentralized asset is not settled; it's a living, breathing experiment.
Let me set the scene. I was in Zurich during the height of the ICO bubble, analyzing whitepapers that promised to 'disrupt everything.' But the real disruption was happening under the hood of Bitcoin. BIP-110 was proposed as a way to enforce soft fork activation without waiting for miner consensus. The idea was elegant in theory: if nodes run the upgrade, they can reject blocks that don't signal support, forcing miners to upgrade or risk being orphaned. In practice, it's a political atom bomb. The current data shows that less than 3% of miners have signaled for BIP-110. That's not a quiet resistance; it's a deafening silence.
Context: The Philosophy of Mandatory Signaling
To understand BIP-110, you need to understand the philosophical chasm it represents. Bitcoin's consensus mechanism is often described as 'Nakamoto Consensus'—miners produce blocks, nodes validate them. But who gets to decide the rules? The developers who write the code, the miners who run the hardware, or the users who run the nodes? BIP-110 is a 'user-activated soft fork' (UASF) tool: it empowers nodes to enforce a rule change even if miners disagree. Proponents argue that this is the ultimate check on miner power—a way to prevent a cartel from blocking necessary upgrades. Critics see it as a recipe for chain splits and centralization of decision-making in the hands of a few core developers.
BIP-110 was introduced in 2015, during the blocksize debate. It was an alternative to BIP-9, which used version bits and required 95% miner support. BIP-9 became the standard for later upgrades like SegWit and Taproot, because it aligned miner incentives with network health. BIP-110, on the other hand, was never widely adopted. Until now. The fact that it's being tested again—even on a limited scale—suggests that some developers still believe in the 'code is law' approach. But the market is sending a clear signal: miners are not on board.
Core: The Technical and Values Analysis
Let's dive into the numbers. Mandatory signaling means that after a certain block height, nodes running the BIP-110-compatible client will reject any block that does not include a specific version bit. If the majority of miners ignore this, the network splits: one chain follows the new rules (with only a few blocks), the other follows the old rules (with the majority of hashpower). The result is a 'forced' fork, but not a clean one. The chain with the new rules will have very low security, and the old chain will continue as before. In practice, the mandatory signaling becomes a dead letter unless a significant portion of the hashpower follows.
With less than 3% miner support, the probability of a successful UASF is negligible. But the test is not about success; it's about the process. The developers behind this test are likely probing the resilience of the network—can a small group of nodes force a change? Based on my experience auditing Bitcoin Core proposals, I've seen this pattern before: a small group of ideologues pushing a change that has no economic backing. The result is always the same: the market shrugs, the miners ignore, and the proposal fades into obscurity. But the damage to the narrative can be lasting.
This is where the values layer matters. Bitcoin's decentralization is not just a technical feature; it's a social contract. When developers attempt to circumvent miner consent, they undermine the trust that miners place in the code. Miners are not just mercenaries; they are stakeholders who have invested billions in hardware. Treating them as adversaries is a recipe for conflict. The 'Evangelist' in me sees this as a failure of vision. We do not follow trends; we architect ecosystems. And an ecosystem built on coercion is not decentralized; it's a dictatorship of the code.
Contrarian: The Pragmatism Test
Now, let me play the contrarian. Maybe BIP-110's failure is actually a success for Bitcoin's resilience. The system is designed to absorb shocks, and this test shows that the network can resist poorly-conceived upgrades without a catastrophic split. The hard-fork rollback plan mentioned in the report is a safety net—a recognition that the experiment might fail. This is precisely the kind of iterative, pragmatic governance that makes Bitcoin robust. The 'Code is Law' crowd might be disappointed, but the 'Consensus is King' crowd can celebrate.
However, there is a blind spot. The test itself might be a distraction. While developers are arguing about mandatory signaling, the real innovation is happening elsewhere—on Layer 2, in Lightning Network, in new covenant proposals. BIP-110 is a ghost from the past, and it's consuming energy that could be spent on scaling solutions. The contrarian truth is that this whole episode is a waste of time. The market doesn't care about a 10-year-old BIP with 3% support. The only people who care are the ones who still believe in the 'developer vs miner' narrative. The rest of us are building the future.
Takeaway: Vision Forward
So, what does this mean for the average Bitcoin holder? Nothing, in the short term. But in the long term, it's a reminder that Bitcoin's governance is not a settled science. The code is open, but the vision is ours to build. We must resist the temptation to force change through technical coercion. Real adoption comes from alignment—when miners, developers, and users all see the same value. Volatility is the tax we pay for freedom, but unnecessary governance battles are a tax we can avoid. Trust is not given; it is compiled, line by line. And right now, the lines of BIP-110 are not compiling into consensus.
Let's move forward, not backward. The future of Bitcoin is not in mandatory signaling; it's in voluntary cooperation. As I wrote in my newsletter, 'The Decentralized Ledger,' the true test of decentralization is not the ability to enforce rules, but the ability to create rules that everyone wants to follow. BIP-110 fails that test. Let's learn from it and move on.