Chain-Splitting Shenanigans or Digital Spring Cleaning? Adam Back Brands BIP-110 a 'User-Rugging' Scheme

Adam Back, the cypherpunk legend and Blockstream CEO, is reloading his rhetorical cannon, taking fresh aim at Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-110. He's framing it not as an upgrade, but as a potential existential grenade lobbed at network stability and Bitcoin's hard-earned "digital gold" street cred.

The proposal, which aims to scrub the blockchain of pesky digital graffiti like Ordinals and Runes via a 12-month soft fork, is being painted by Back as a case of cutting off the network's nose to spite its face. He suggests its champions are ready to "sacrifice ordinary users" on the altar of punishing spam, a move about as popular as a fee spike during a bull run.

The highlighted risks read like a degen's nightmare: frozen transaction outputs that could lock users out of their sats permanently, and the specter of a chain split. The real kicker? It would activate with a mere 50% hash rate support, a far cry from the traditional 95% consensus. This essentially rolls the dice on creating two competing Bitcoins, a scenario about as desirable as a hard fork in your portfolio.

Back also warns of the reputational fallout, calling the whole push an "attempt at a lynch mob" that attacks Bitcoin's sacred neutrality. His argument is simple: spam is a nuisance, like a notification you can't turn off, not a security threat. BIP-110, in his view, is a cure far more toxic than the disease it claims to treat.

Taking to X, Back distilled the logic with dry wit: "110-think that it's ok to rug-pull users if it rug-pulls spammers also." He declared the proposal "dead on arrival" but voiced unease over the "reckless" mindset of its backers, a sentiment familiar to anyone who's watched a meme coin pump and dump.

For now, the market has voted with its nodes: only 2.4% to 4.5% support BIP-110, mostly those running Bitcoin Knots. Major mining pools are giving it the same level of interest as a zero-fee transaction—which is to say, none at all.

Back's final assessment is that the mere willingness to entertain such a radical, chain-splitting idea is "deeply concerning" for the Bitcoin ecosystem. It suggests a faction might be willing to break the very thing they claim to protect, all for a bit of blockchain hygiene.