The primary danger to the blockchain of the first cryptocurrency comes from "ambitious opportunists" seeking to alter the protocol, according to Michael Saylor, founder of Strategy.
The greatest risk to Bitcoin is ambitious opportunists advocating protocol changes.
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) January 24, 2026
While he did not specify whom he was referring to, Bitcoin maximalist Justin Bechler suggested that Saylor might be talking about developers promoting controversial use cases for the network, such as the issuance of NFTs or storing images.
He’s talking about the Core funding apparatus: Brink, Spiral, HRF, Chaincode Labs, OpenSats, etc. and the developers they pay to repurpose Bitcoin for non-monetary “use cases.”
— Justin Bechler (@1914ad) January 24, 2026
Discussions continue within the community regarding BIP-110, an initiative from the Bitcoin Knots team aimed at combating spam.
This proposal suggests a soft fork to temporarily limit the amount of data in transactions at the consensus level. Previously, the controversial Bitcoin Core v3 update increased the OP_RETURN limit from 80 to 100,000 bytes.
As of this writing, only 3% of validators have supported the idea, while approval from 55% of participants is required.
Source: TheBitcoinPortal.The authors of BIP-110 argue that embedding arbitrary data overloads node operators, diverting resources from Bitcoin's core mission of developing the financial system.
Critics oppose any protocol changes, deeming them unnecessary.
“The proposal is virtually ineffective in addressing the stated problem: methods for embedding data have long evolved beyond the mechanisms that BIP-110 seeks to restrict. Someone has already managed to embed the full text of this very proposal into the blockchain without violating its own absurd rules,” noted one opponent of the soft fork, known as Coinjoined Chris.
He stated that the history of the first cryptocurrency's development has repeatedly shown that users always find ways to bypass restrictions on recording data in the blockchain.
Cryptopunk Adam Back also opposed the Bitcoin Knots initiative, arguing that any attempts to alter Bitcoin's architecture "undermine the very essence of its existence."
“The brilliant and already embedded mechanism to counter this risk is a dynamic fee structure compatible with economic incentives, along with Proof of Work. This forces spammers to pay real costs. Spammers have an inherent disadvantage: regular Bitcoin transactions are very small, while the average spam flow is 40 times larger than a standard transaction,” he emphasized.
In October, Bitcoin developer known as dathonohm also introduced BIP-444, which proposes to temporarily limit the ability to add arbitrary data to the blockchain.