- Michael Saylor said BIP 110 introduces unnecessary consensus changes that pose greater risks than Bitcoin spam.
- Adam Back argued the proposal conflicts with Bitcoin’s decentralized governance and censorship-resistant design.
- Both maintained that transaction policy disputes should not justify changing Bitcoin’s existing consensus rules.
Bitcoin debate intensified after Strategy founder Michael Saylor and Blockstream co-founder Adam Back publicly opposed BIP 110. Through separate statements, both argued the proposal conflicts with Bitcoin’s existing principles, warning that changing consensus rules over spam concerns could create broader risks and divide the network rather than resolve the dispute.
Saylor Warns Against Consensus Rule Change
Michael Saylor argued that BIP 110 transforms a disagreement over spam into a consensus-level protocol change. According to Saylor, the proposal would invalidate transactions that currently meet Bitcoin’s existing rules and pay transaction fees.
He said that precedent creates a greater concern than spam itself. Saylor added that Bitcoin faces many other issues deserving greater attention than altering consensus over transaction filtering.
His comments focused on protecting Bitcoin’s current validation rules. He maintained that changing those rules over a policy dispute introduces unnecessary risk.
Adam Back Defends Bitcoin’s Design
Meanwhile, Adam Back explained his opposition in a detailed post discussing Bitcoin’s decentralized structure. According to Back, supporters of BIP 110 appear motivated by legitimate concerns but misunderstand how Bitcoin’s technical governance operates.
Back said decentralization prevents users from imposing their preferred transaction policies on others. Instead, participants may change their own software but cannot require the broader network to adopt those changes.
He also argued that Bitcoin’s decentralized technical review process protects the protocol from changes lacking broad technical consensus. According to Back, developers and reviewers examine proposals before any network-wide adoption occurs.
Back Says Fork Remains The Alternative
Back acknowledged that many BIP 110 supporters want to protect Bitcoin from spam. However, he argued that the proposal conflicts with Bitcoin’s permissionless and censorship-resistant design.
According to Back, disagreements over transaction policies should not override the network’s decentralized decision-making process. He encouraged supporters to study the technical reasons behind Bitcoin’s existing approach before pursuing protocol changes.
Back added that anyone rejecting the existing consensus remains free to create a separate fork. However, he said Bitcoin itself would not adopt BIP 110 under those circumstances.