Adam Back and Michael Saylor oppose BIP 110

Two of the most well-known names in the Bitcoin world are joining forces in their opposition to BIP 110. Both Adam Back, co-founder of Blockstream and inventor of Hashcash, and Michael Saylor, CEO of Strategy, are speaking out publicly against the implementation of this controversial proposal on the Bitcoin network. The debate over BIP 110 is thus intensifying further, while the Bitcoin price hovers around $64K with a slight decline of 0.3% over the past 24 hours.

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Saylor: BIP 110 Sets a Dangerous Precedent

Michael Saylor is brief but forceful in his assessment. According to him, BIP 110 addresses a spam debate by turning it into a consensus change, which in turn would invalidate legitimate transactions that have already been paid for. He considers this far more dangerous than the spam problem itself.

Saylor calls on the Bitcoin community to save its energy for real threats. The idea that a relatively minor disagreement over spam transactions would lead to a change in the consensus rules is, in his view, unacceptable. In this, he aligns with broader concerns about the direction certain Bitcoin proposals are taking.

Adam Back: BIP 110 Conflicts with the Core of Bitcoin

Adam Back goes deeper into the technical and philosophical objections. In a detailed explanation, he argues that BIP 110 is essentially an attempt to control the transactions of others, which runs counter to the decentralised and permissionless nature of Bitcoin. Decentralisation means that you cannot impose your will on others, he states. That freedom applies to everyone, including proponents of BIP 110.

Back acknowledges that the people behind BIP 110 have good intentions, but believes they do not fully understand how the Bitcoin protocol works. He compares the technical consensus process at Bitcoin to that of the IETF: no single developer can push through a change without broad technical support from hundreds of other experts. This makes the system robust against unwanted changes. Anyone who still wants to push BIP 110 through can start a fork, but Bitcoin will not participate, Back warns. He calls on everyone to return to the cypherpunk principles on which Bitcoin was built.