Hook
In late 2023, a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal died in the public square. Not on a battlefield of code, but in the quiet, grinding gears of human consensus. BIP-110, whatever its technical merits, never made it past the rough consensus test. It failed. And here’s the uncomfortable truth: that failure is the most bullish signal Bitcoin has sent all year.
I remember sitting in a Stockholm co-working space in 2017, recording an early episode of Chain of Thought, arguing that decentralization isn’t a technical feature—it’s a social contract. Seven years later, I watched that contract execute itself in real time. No court. No CEO. Just a protocol that said, not yet, not like this.
Context
BIP-110, a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, aimed to modify the base-layer protocol. Its exact contents remain obscure—lost to a dry forum thread or a GitHub pull request that never merged. But the outcome is clear: it was rejected by the community. The article I analyzed called it a “failure,” but that’s the wrong word. It was a deliberate refusal. Bitcoin’s governance model, famously messy and slow, flexed its muscle. No one voted. No one signed. But the network decided: this change does not align with our shared value of immutability.
I’ve covered Bitcoin’s governance since the Blocksize Wars. In 2020, during DeFi Summer, I wrote a thread titled “Why DeFi is a Protest Movement”—arguing that liquidity pools are about trust, not just yield. The same logic applies here. Bitcoin’s resistance to change isn’t a bug; it’s a feature designed to protect the very thing that makes it valuable: predictability.
Core
Let’s examine the mechanics of what happened. BIP-110’s failure exposes three layers of Bitcoin’s immune system:
First, technical conservatism. Bitcoin Core maintainers don’t approve changes lightly. Every proposal undergoes months, sometimes years, of review. The Bar is high. Why? Because a bad upgrade could split the chain, destroy billions in value, or introduce an exploit. I’ve audited smart contracts on Ethereum. I’ve seen the cost of rushed upgrades. Bitcoin’s slow approach is expensive in velocity, but cheap in trust.
Second, social consensus. This is the messy part. Bitcoin has no formal voting mechanism. Instead, signaling happens through miner hash rate, node software updates, and loud voices on the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list. BIP-110 died because enough key players—developers, miners, holders—decided the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. The proposal likely touched something sacred: maybe block size, maybe scripting language limits. We don’t know the specifics. But the pattern is clear: Bitcoin rejects changes that increase complexity without a proportional increase in security or decentralization.
Third, narrative reinforcement. This failure doesn’t hurt Bitcoin; it deepens its myth. Every rejected BIP is a proof-of-work for the idea that Bitcoin is “digital gold,” not an “upgradeable app.” In my 2022 burnout period, I wrote “Finding Humanity in the Void”—a series where I argued that blockchain’s real value is human connection, not speed. Bitcoin’s inability to change is its ultimate connection to its users: you can trust it won’t be arbitrarily changed.
Trust is no longer a promise; it’s a protocol.
Think about the alternative. If BIP-110 had passed, what would have happened? Exchanges would need to update node software. Wallets would fork. Lightning Network implementations would need to re-audit. The entire industry would grind to a halt for months, burning hundreds of millions in compliance costs. Instead, the failure saved that energy. The pivot wasn’t a shift—it was a confirmation.
Contrarian
Here’s the part that makes people uncomfortable: BIP-110’s failure is actually bad for Bitcoin’s long-term competitiveness.
I know—it sounds heretical for a Bitcoin evangelist. But I’ve seen this movie before. In 2020, Ethereum’s ability to upgrade gave birth to DeFi, NFTs, and a thriving L2 ecosystem. Bitcoin’s stubbornness means all innovation moves to other chains. Ordinals were a bright spot, injecting fee revenue and new narrative into Bitcoin’s security model. Without the inscription wave, Bitcoin’s security budget would be in trouble post-halving. But Ordinals are an L1 parasitic growth, not an L1 upgrade. They don’t solve the core innovation problem.
Why? Because trustless systems require trusting relationships. Bitcoin’s community trusts that the protocol won’t change. But that same trust prevents the protocol from evolving to meet new threats—like quantum computing, or the rise of AI agents that need programmable money, not just fixed supply.
I spoke at the 2024 “Ethical Investor” webinar series. Institutional players told me: “We love Bitcoin as collateral. But we need programmable settlement to compete with traditional finance.” BIP-110’s failure signals that Bitcoin will remain rigid. That’s fine for storing value. But for building the next generation of financial infrastructure, it’s a liability.
“Code is law, but empathy is the interface.” And empathy requires listening to the market’s changing needs. Bitcoin’s governance is deaf to that signal.
Takeaway
So where does this leave us? BIP-110’s failure is not a crisis—it’s a mirror. It reflects the trade-off embedded in Bitcoin’s DNA: stability over flexibility, certainty over evolution. For holders, that’s a comfort. For builders, it’s a constraint.
We didn’t build the perfect system. We built one that refuses to be broken. And sometimes, that’s enough.
But as the world races toward tokenized real-world assets, AI-native economies, and programmable cash, ask yourself: Will Bitcoin’s governance model still be a strength when the next market crash comes? Or will it become a weakness that lets other protocols eat its lunch?
The answer isn’t in any BIP. It’s in the millions of nodes that choose to run a version of Bitcoin that cannot be upgraded against its will. That choice is the real article.
