TL;DR
- Samson Mow says the BIP-110 dispute grew from avoidable tensions inside Bitcoin Core and criticism over OP_RETURN policy.
- He argues that leaving OP_RETURN unchanged temporarily could have reduced pressure and prevented the conflict from becoming a consensus dispute.
- BIP-110 sought to restrict arbitrary data on Bitcoin, but the proposed fork attracted minimal miner support and failed to gain broad adoption.
Bitcoin entrepreneur Samson Mow argues that the controversy surrounding BIP-110 could have been avoided if Bitcoin Core developers had handled the OP_RETURN dispute differently. His comments place the current conflict within a broader debate over Bitcoin’s development process, network neutrality and how much authority developers should have over transaction policy.
Mow made the remarks during exchanges on X involving Bitcoin Core developer Antoine Poinsot, analyst Michael Sullivan and Blockstream co-founder Adam Back. He argued that the growing opposition to BIP-110 was not simply the result of ideological disagreements, but also a reaction to decisions and confrontational behavior surrounding Bitcoin Core.
Mow directly challenged Poinsot, arguing that failing to acknowledge responsibility for the conditions that helped generate BIP-110 could allow similar disputes to emerge again. He also criticized what he described as aggressive attacks from people associated with the opposing side of the debate.
If you don't take responsibility for your own hand in directly spawning the BIP-110 movement, it will just happen again. Maybe you can't see it, but your "side" was just as nasty in its attacks, especially given you and other Core devs' close association with angry… https://t.co/Kw4oS6UsJd
— Samson Mow (@Excellion) August 12, 2026
Bitcoin BIP-110 And The OP_RETURN Dispute
Mow’s argument is that the conflict escalated unnecessarily. He said developers could have left the OP_RETURN policy alone for a year or two, allowing tensions to decline before reconsidering the issue. In his view, the distinction between relay policy and consensus rules was especially important because changing a default policy does not automatically alter Bitcoin’s underlying consensus rules.
BIP-110 attempted to move parts of the dispute into consensus by temporarily restricting arbitrary data storage. The proposal targeted larger data payloads and sought to reduce ways of using Bitcoin primarily as a data-storage layer. That approach turned a policy disagreement into a much broader protocol debate.
Bitcoin’s Governance Debate Continues
The episode also illustrates why Bitcoin’s decentralized structure makes controversial protocol changes difficult. Developers can propose code, miners can signal preferences and node operators can choose which software to run, but none of those groups alone can simply dictate what the market recognizes as Bitcoin.
From a pro-Bitcoin perspective, the dispute demonstrates the value of preserving user choice and avoiding unnecessary consensus battles. Mow’s criticism suggests that better communication and restraint around policy changes could have prevented a technical disagreement from developing into a much larger governance conflict.
