Summary

  • Luke Dashjr has been removed from his position as an editor of Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs), losing all administrative access to the repository.
  • The motion for his removal was filed by fellow editor Mark "Murch" Erhardt on August 9, citing a conflict of interest related to BIP-110, insufficient contributions, and poor collaboration among editors.
  • Dashjr has publicly contested the decision, announcing a sabbatical from his role at mining pool Ocean.

Luke Dashjr has been ousted from his role as a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal editor shortly after the soft fork he supported, known as BIP-110, resulted in a chain split that managed to mine only two blocks before halting.

Mark Erhardt, also known as Murch, initiated the removal process on the Bitcoin Development Mailing List on August 9 and submitted a pull request that day, which he described as a sample implementation.

Erhardt outlined four reasons for the motion, stating that Dashjr had exercised his editorial power "inconsistently with the established editorial process," which he believed unfairly benefitted the proposal he was involved with. This included an attempt to assign BIP-110 a number on X prior to any mailing list discussion and a merge that occurred within minutes of the pull request being submitted.

Additionally, he claimed that Dashjr had contributed fewer than 1% of the comments in the BIP repository since new editors joined in April 2024, and that the recent merge was his first since May 2024. He described Dashjr's support for a soft fork that was shifting towards a hard fork as a "complete departure from the Bitcoin development ecosystem," noting that trust and coordination with other editors had deteriorated.

A Role Without an Exit

The pull request suggests removing a line to eliminate Dashjr's name from BIP 3, the document listing the editors. Support for this action has been indicated through positive reactions and comments on the pull request.

Dashjr has continued to voice his concerns on X, stating that "Core isn't supposed to have ANY control of the BIPs repo." He has also refused to acknowledge the majority chain as Bitcoin, referring to it as "Bpedo" and claiming it is “guaranteed to fail.”

On Monday, he announced that he would take a sabbatical from Ocean, where he serves as chairman and CTO, stating he would focus on enhancing Bitcoin and contributing to open-source projects that support it.

I am taking a sabbatical from OCEAN as Chairman and CTO and will turn my immediate focus to working on Bitcoin and open-source projects to support Bitcoin. I believe this is the best use of my time and is in the best interests of Bitcoin and Bitcoin’s long-term health.

— Luke Dashjr (@LukeDashjr) August 10, 2026

BIP-110 aimed to temporarily restrict non-financial data, like Ordinals inscriptions, from Bitcoin transactions. Support for the proposal peaked at 51 out of 2,016 blocks before the split, equating to 2.53%, far below the 55% required for activation.

Since mandatory signaling began at block 961,632, no blocks have indicated support for the proposal, according to BIP110 Monitor. Critic Michael Saylor from Strategy remarked that 99.85% of hashpower remained with Bitcoin, opposing BIP-110 in a tweet.