Bitcoin entrepreneur Samson Mow argued on August 12, 2026 that the bitter dispute over BIP-110 was largely avoidable, placing much of the blame on decisions and confrontational behavior inside the Bitcoin Core ecosystem. The remarks followed a series of exchanges on X involving Bitcoin Core developer Antoine Poinsot, analyst Michael Sullivan and Blockstream co-founder Adam Back.
Mow challenged Poinsot directly, saying: 'If you don't take responsibility for your own hand in directly spawning the BIP-110 movement, it will just happen again.' He claimed that the opposing camp was just as aggressive in its attacks and said the backlash should have been predictable.
The core of the dispute revolves around OP_RETURN policy. Mow argued that developers could have left OP_RETURN unchanged for a year or two until tensions cooled. He stressed the distinction between a default relay policy and a consensus rule, noting that 'everyone knew it was only a default,' so changing it or not made no practical difference.
BIP-110 sought to restrict arbitrary data storage on Bitcoin, targeting larger data payloads and trying to reduce use of Bitcoin as a data-storage layer. Supporters of restrictions say scarce block space should primarily serve monetary transactions. The proposal eventually led to the creation of a new Bitcoin fork, but that fork recently failed because of extremely low adoption and minimal miner support.
The episode highlights how Bitcoin’s decentralized governance makes controversial protocol changes difficult: developers can propose code, miners can signal preferences, and node operators choose what software to run, but no single group can dictate what the market recognizes as Bitcoin.
