Michael Saylor joins Bitcoin BIP-110 dispute as early lock-in window slips out of reach

Michael Saylor has sharpened opposition to Bitcoin’s proposed BIP-110 soft fork, arguing the measure turns a dispute over blockchain spam into a broader governance question about who gets to decide which fee-paying transactions remain valid. His comments add weight from Strategy, which holds about 843,775 BTC, as miner signaling remained very low and the proposal’s roughly 55% activation threshold continued to draw criticism. BIP-110 would impose a one-year soft fork that temporarily tightens limits on certain data-storage uses, including a stricter OP_RETURN cap, and would reject some transactions that are valid under Bitcoin’s current rules. Supporters say that would curb non-financial data storage and protect node resources. Critics, including Saylor, argue that using consensus changes to filter transactions by perceived purpose would set a dangerous precedent, raise the risk of a chain split and create uncertainty around Bitcoin’s neutrality and protocol stability. At 06:07 UTC on July 20, the monitor recorded 11 signaling blocks out of 1,236 tracked, or 0.89%, making the current difficulty period mathematically unable to meet the proposal’s early-lock threshold. Separately, support stood at about 1.3% as of July 13, and the voluntary signaling deadline falls around block 961,542 in August. Under the proposal, miners would need to signal support in about 55% of a 2,016-block window, far below Bitcoin’s historical 95% threshold for permanent consensus changes. If the threshold is not met, nodes enforcing BIP-110 would require version bit 4 from heights 961,632 through 963,647 and reject blocks that omit it, potentially forcing miners, nodes, exchanges and wallet providers to choose which chain to recognize. Saylor argues that fees and relay policies, rather than consensus-layer filtering, are the better tools for handling unwanted data traffic because they can be adjusted without a network-wide rules change.