Bitcoin Faces Fresh BIP-110 Battle as Adam Back Warns of Minority Fork Risk

Bitcoin’s latest governance debate is heating up, and this time the argument isn’t about price. It’s about who gets to decide the network’s future.

The controversy centers on BIP-110, a proposal that would restrict non-monetary data in Bitcoin transactions through a user-activated soft fork (UASF). Supporters argue the change would reduce network spam. Critics, however, aren’t buying it.

BIP-110 Sparks New Community Divide

Momentum around BIP-110 reached a critical stage in early June as supporters pushed for activation without relying on miner consensus. That’s where the proposal ran into fierce resistance.

On June 8, Adam Back publicly rejected the proposal, calling it technically flawed and warning that forcing activation could split the network into a minority fork. He argued that BIP-110 lacks the broad ecosystem support that helped SegWit eventually activate in 2017 after years of coordination between developers, miners, and node operators.

Back also rejected comparisons between BIP-110 and SegWit, saying the situations are fundamentally different.

Spam Reduction Argument Faces Pushback

A major selling point for BIP-110 has been the claim that it would reduce transaction spam on the network.

Yet Back dismissed that argument entirely, stating that the proposal simply would not achieve the intended outcome. According to his view, imposing a user-activated soft fork without genuine ecosystem backing creates a separate minority chain rather than a meaningful protocol upgrade.

To illustrate his stance, he shared an image of a cat sitting inside a blue-tape square labeled “DEFAULT OP_RETURN LIMIT,” describing it as BIP-110 “in a nutshell.”

Bullish Despite The Governance Dispute

Interestingly, the protocol dispute hasn’t changed Back’s market outlook. While criticizing BIP-110, he maintained a bullish stance on Bitcoin. On June 9, his comment on a meme post that shows that he is fully committed to BTC despite market uncertainty. He also revealed that he purchased additional BTC during the recent dip and believes higher prices are ahead.

For now, Bitcoin finds itself balancing two separate conversations: a contentious protocol debate on one side and unwavering long-term conviction from some of its most prominent supporters on the other.