It began with a single tweet. Michael Saylor, the billionaire evangelist of MicroStrategy, stood before a video feed and declared that BIP 110—a proposal to filter Bitcoin transactions carrying Ordinals data—was a poison pill. "Bitcoin must remain neutral," he said, his voice a measured calm against the noise of a market hungry for drama. I watched that clip in my New York apartment, a cup of black coffee cooling beside me. It was 2017 all over again, when I published a vulnerability report that cost me a fortune but kept my conscience clean. Saylor wasn't just making a statement; he was defending the soul of the protocol.
Conscience over consensus. That phrase has guided my work since I first audited smart contracts for ICOs. Now, Saylor was invoking a similar principle. But why? Why would a man who owns over 200,000 Bitcoin risk standing against a proposal that, on its surface, aims to reduce "spam" on the network? To understand, we need to look inside BIP 110 and the quiet war being waged over Bitcoin's identity.
Context: The Proposal and the Rebellion
BIP 110 is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal that would allow miners to reject transactions containing arbitrary data—specifically, the inscriptions that power Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens. Since early 2023, Ordinals have turned Bitcoin into a canvas for NFTs, sparking a boom in on-chain art and meme tokens. To purists, this is a bloat; to miners, it's a new revenue stream; to Saylor, it's a test of Bitcoin's core value: permissionless neutrality.
The proposal's technical mechanism is straightforward: add a filtering rule that nodes use to identify and drop transactions with large data payloads. But the implications are anything but simple. Filtering requires a consensus among miners and nodes on what constitutes "bad" data—a subjective judgment that breaks the deterministic machine of code-as-law. Saylor's opposition, and the stunning 0% miner support rate, suggest that the Bitcoin community is not ready to cross that line.
Trust is earned, not mined. This is a lesson I learned during DeFi Summer, when I saw how quickly a governance parameter can be weaponized. In my years running a crypto education platform, I've watched projects collapse because they prioritized short-term control over long-term integrity. The 0% miner support is not a fluke; it's a signal that the economic backbone of Bitcoin has chosen principle over profit—for now.
Core: The Technical and Economic Anatomy of Neutrality
Technical Risks of Content Filtering
To filter transactions, you need a method to distinguish "data" from "value." Bitcoin's scripting language allows OP_RETURN outputs and witness data, both used by Ordinals. The technical solution proposed in BIP 110 involves setting a maximum size for data-carrying inputs—a change that would require a soft fork. Here's the problem: any filtering algorithm introduces a potential for false positives and false negatives. If a legitimate financial transaction accidentally carries an inscription (e.g., a multiparty swap with data encoding), it could be rejected. Worse, the filtering logic would become a new attack surface for censorship by large miners.
From my experience auditing Ethereum smart contracts, I've seen how a seemingly innocent "allow list" becomes a nightmare of centralization. The same applies here. Once you build a filter, someone will demand it be used for other types of transactions—maybe those linked to ransomware, maybe those from certain addresses. The slope is slippery, and it ends with Bitcoin becoming a permissioned ledger.
Soul in the machine. Bitcoin's strength is its Byzantine fault tolerance, not its ability to judge content. The moment a transaction is rejected based on its payload, the protocol loses its indifference—the very trait that makes it a global settlement layer.
Economic Incentives and Miner Behavior
The 0% miner support rate is the most revealing data point. Every major mining pool—Foundry, Antpool, F2Pool—has signaled rejection. On the surface, this appears ideological. But there are cold, hard economics at play. Ordinals transactions have contributed significant fees to miners since their inception. In the past six months, they accounted for roughly 5-10% of total mining revenue, depending on network congestion. Filtering them would cut into that income, directly hitting the bottom line.
Yet the miners are also thinking long-term. Bitcoin's store-of-value narrative depends on its neutrality. If the network starts filtering, it becomes just another blockchain—vulnerable to political pressure, less attractive to institutional capital. Saylor's opposition, as the largest public Bitcoin holder, reinforces the economic argument: neutrality is worth more than the short-term fees from Ordinals. It's a bet that the market will reward immutable principles over dirty profits.
Governance: Who Really Decides?
This drama exposes the paradox of Bitcoin governance. The BIP process is designed to be slow and conservative, requiring broad consensus. But in practice, a small number of powerful actors—including miners and major holders like Saylor—exert disproportionate influence. The 0% miner support is a veto, not a vote. It shows that when economic incentives align against change, no proposal can move forward. But what happens when incentives align for a harmful change? That's the deeper risk.
I recall a moment in 2021 during my work with the Compound governance working group. A proposal to adjust a collateral factor passed with 51% support, but the minority was furious. We spent months healing the community. Bitcoin's governance is even more fragile because it lacks a formal voting mechanism. The silence of 0% support is loud, but it's also a sign of a system that can be captured by a single-minded majority.
DeFi must mature. This incident is a microcosm of a larger challenge: how do we maintain decentralization when the voices of capital and hash power dominate? Saylor's stance is principled, but it's also self-serving. He has billions at stake. The true test will be when a proposal emerges that benefits large holders at the expense of small users.
Contrarian: The Hidden Cost of Neutrality
The narrative of this week is clear: Saylor the hero, neutrality the winner. But I see a contrarian truth. The same neutrality that protects Ordinals also protects ransomware demands, illicit gambling, and sanctioned transactions. Bitcoin's immutable ledger does not discriminate. By refusing to filter, we accept that the network will be used for both good and bad. Saylor's defense of neutrality is a defense of this uncomfortable reality.
Moreover, the 0% miner support might not be as pure as it seems. Miners are currently enjoying the fee bonanza from Ordinals. If the market turns and fees become volatile, their support for filtering could flip. I've seen this pattern before in the ICO boom: miners support a change only as long as it pays. When the gravy train stops, principle often takes a backseat to profit.
What if a future BIP proposes filtering only for known illicit addresses—a compromise that keeps neutrality but adds a backdoor? That would be even more dangerous, because it would be packaged as a virtuous improvement. Saylor's absolutist stance might prevent that slippery slope, but it also leaves the network exposed to regulatory backlash. The same regulators who orbit Bitcoin's edges could demand a more proactive approach. If Bitcoin cannot even filter known malware addresses, how can it be trusted by global finance?
Trust is earned, not mined. But trust is also fragile. The market's faith in Bitcoin's neutrality is strong today, but a single major exploit funded by a ransomware payment on chain could shift public opinion. The contrarian view is that Saylor's opposition, while noble, may be short-sighted from a systemic risk perspective. Sometimes, the most ethical path is the one that acknowledges nuance.
Takeaway: The Unfinished Revolution
BIP 110 is dead on arrival, but the questions it raised are alive. Bitcoin's community has reaffirmed its commitment to permissionless access, but the price of that commitment is eternal vigilance. We must guard against both the tyranny of the majority and the seduction of purification. Saylor has drawn a line in the sand, but lines can be erased by the next wave of FOMO or fear.
What happens when Ordinals truly clog the mempool and fees spike to $50 per transaction? Will the same miners who opposed BIP 110 suddenly shout for a filter? Will Saylor hold his ground? The soul of Bitcoin is not in its code, but in its community's unwavering dedication to the principle of neutrality. Let's keep it that way—not because it's easy, but because it's right.
Conscience over consensus. The next battle is already being forged in the mempool. We must be ready.