Saylor joins BIP-110 debate; miners face last window to signal

Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy, entered the debate over Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-110 and argued a temporary soft fork would be riskier than the issue it aims to fix. Live monitoring at 06:07 UTC on July 20 showed 11 signaling blocks among 1,236 tracked in the current difficulty period.

BIP-110 would enact a one-year soft fork that restricts certain arbitrary-data uses and some script patterns at the consensus level to reduce on-chain storage. The proposal sets an ordinary early-lock path that requires 1,109 signaling blocks, about 55% of a 2,016-block period, and a mandatory-signaling path tied to a version bit.

With 11 signals recorded and 780 blocks remaining in the period, the current window cannot reach the 1,109-signal threshold. Even if every remaining block signaled, the period would finish with about 791 signaling blocks, short of the early-lock requirement.

The next full 2,016-block window runs from block height 959,616 through 961,631 and is the final ordinary opportunity to reach early lock-in under the proposal’s schedule. If that window fails, enforcing nodes would require version bit 4 from heights 961,632 through 963,647 and would reject blocks that do not carry the bit.

Using a nominal 10-minute block interval, the mandatory-signaling window is projected to run roughly from Aug. 8 to Aug. 22. Forced lock-in would occur at height 963,648 and latest-path activation at 965,664, about Sept. 5. Those dates will move with actual block production.

The proposal’s temporary consensus rules would last 52,416 blocks, about one year after activation, and would exempt inputs that spend UTXOs created before activation.

The decision affects miners, node operators, wallet developers and exchanges. Mining pools can choose whether to signal for BIP-110. Nodes can choose whether to enforce the new rules. Wallet and application developers must check spending paths such as Taproot and Miniscript for compatibility.

If enforcing nodes reject blocks that other parts of the network accept, two competing chain histories could appear. Exchanges and businesses would then have to decide which chain governs deposits, withdrawals and confirmations.

Saylor wrote that he supports protecting the network but warned against invalidating transactions that are currently valid and fee-paying, calling the proposed remedy more dangerous than the condition. Backers of BIP-110 say the limits would reduce data-storage burdens on full nodes; critics focus on the precedent of changing consensus rules that would reject previously valid transactions.

The immediate focus is whether identifiable mining pools will signal in the next ordinary window and how node operators and major economic actors respond as the proposal’s fixed block heights approach.