The proposal aims to limit the amount of data transmitted to combat spam on the network.

As of January 25, 729 out of 24,482 (~3%) nodes in the Bitcoin blockchain have "signaled" support for the soft fork under BIP-110. This initiative is designed to tackle spam.

Source: TheBitcoinPortal.

Introduced in early December 2025, the proposal includes a temporary consensus-level restriction on the size of data transmitted in transactions. Led by the Bitcoin Knots team, the program is set for one year and allows for adjustments based on community feedback.

BIP-110 Roadmap. Source: bip110.org.

Approval of the soft fork requires support from 55% of validators. So far, none of the top 20 mining pools have shown interest.

According to BIP-110 authors, including Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dash Jr., arbitrary data embedding adds extra strain on node operators and diverts resources from the primary mission of the first cryptocurrency — enhancing the financial system.

The proposal outlines the following key changes:

  • The output size in transactions is limited to 34 bytes, except for OP_RETURN (83 bytes);
  • "inscriptions" (SegWit) are capped at 256 bytes;
  • Only specific versions of SegWit (v0 and Taproot) are allowed;
  • Temporary restrictions on certain elements of the soft fork Taproot.

"All known use cases of [Bitcoin] will remain fully operational and unaffected," the authors assert.

Debates within the community regarding transaction size restrictions have intensified since last fall, when the controversial Bitcoin Core v30 update was implemented, increasing the OP_RETURN limit from 80 to 100,000 bytes.

Critics argue that the growing hardware demands on nodes due to spam undermine the protocol's appeal as a decentralized monetary network. Bitcoin supporter and researcher Matthew Crater stated:

"It's like one of those parasitic plants, like ivy, that completely covers a tree, consuming it and destroying its internal structure. The ivy itself dies too. That's what spam can do to Bitcoin."

It’s worth noting that in October, Bitcoin developer known as dathonohm also introduced BIP-444, which proposes temporarily limiting the ability to add arbitrary data to the blockchain to reduce the risk of illegal content being posted.