March 2, 2026 will remain as an electric date in the history of the king of cryptos. That day, the Ocean mining pool mined a block like no other, marking the start of an “invisible war”. At the heart of the battle: BIP 110. It is a radical proposal aimed at “purifying” Bitcoin from what some consider to be spam. Between the desire to preserve the sovereign currency and the need to keep a neutral protocol, Bitcoin is going through its biggest governance crisis since 2017. We take stock.
- March 2, 2026 marked a historic turning point for Bitcoin with the mining of a controversial block by the Ocean pool, triggering an “invisible war”.
- The BIP 110 proposal sparked an intense debate, opposing purists and libertarians, calling into question the neutrality of the Bitcoin protocol.
BIP 110: Necessary purification or disguised censorship?
The debate took root in 2023 with the explosion of ordinals and Runes. These are protocols that use the mise à jour Taproot to register images and tokens directly on the blockchain. If this delights the speculators, the purists cry of congestion. The tension went up a notch with Bitcoin Core V30which widely opened the floodgates of data storage via the function OP_RETURN.
Faced with what he judges to be a betrayal, Luke Dashr (via Bitcoin Knots et Ocean) propose la BIP 110. This “Reduced Data Temporary Soft Fork” wants to lock all registration vectors. The mechanism is controversial. It would be enough to 55% support from minors to activate it, a historically low threshold which screams of attack against the credibility of the network.
However, the March 2 technical demonstration by Martin Abovtiaak threw a cold: he managed to enter an image (a Luke Dashjr in tears, supreme irony) completely bypassing the filters of the BIP 110 via SegWit. The proof is therefore made: on Bitcoin, technical censorship is a lost game of cat and mouse.
BIP 110 lacks support from Bitcoin miners
This fracture between “purists” and “libertarians” poses an existential question. If we start filtering images today, what will prevent us from filtering financial transactions tomorrow? Because, with only 5% node supportBIP 110 seems doomed to failure. But, she reminds us that the neutrality of Bitcoin is a constant fight. Should the protocol remain a free playground or become a closed fortress?
As of March 31, 2026, BIP 110 is struggling to gather significant support among minors. However, the ideological divide that it revealed continues to deeply agitate the community. The debate therefore remains open, as we explain in detail in this video available on our YouTube channel:
