Bitcoin's BIP-110 soft fork entered its mandatory voting phase on August 9, the final activation test before the proposal can lock in. The upgrade restricts arbitrary data inscriptions, commonly called Ordinals, for approximately one year and requires 55% of miners to vote support within the testing window.
A soft fork with a 55% threshold is lower than the 95% supermajority Bitcoin required for Taproot, its last major upgrade in 2021. The reduced bar reflects a shift in how the network tests contested changes. BIP-110 has divided the developer and mining community since its proposal, with proponents arguing that unrestricted Ordinals bloat the blockchain and detract from transaction capacity, while opponents contend the protocol should remain neutral to all data types.
The BIP-110 specification codifies the restriction by limiting the size and frequency of data that falls outside Bitcoin's standard transaction types. The mandatory voting window is the penultimate step in Bitcoin's activation framework: miners must publicly declare support or opposition, and if 55% of blocks vote approval, the upgrade moves to a locked-in state before enforcement begins. BIP-110's authors argue the network has reached sufficient maturity to move proposals forward with broader coalition support rather than near-consensus.
Ordinals have grown to represent a substantial share of blockchain data since their introduction in 2023. Mining pools that process Bitcoin transactions now route a portion of computational power toward blocks containing Ordinals inscriptions, a pattern that has persisted despite miner revenue from transaction fees remaining the primary income source. BIP-110 aims to reclaim block space by eliminating the economic incentive to include large arbitrary data payloads.
The voting window runs for a set number of blocks. If the 55% threshold is breached before the window closes, the upgrade locks in and enforcement begins after a further delay, giving nodes time to upgrade software. If support falls short, the proposal returns to the development phase and would require consensus rebuilding before a second activation attempt.
Bitcoin's last contentious soft fork was SegWit in 2017, which faced years of community dispute before activation at 95% threshold. The 55% bar for BIP-110 represents a deliberate choice to lower the consensus requirement for future upgrades. Several competing proposals for handling Ordinals exist, including technical restrictions and market-based fee pricing mechanisms that do not require protocol changes.
The outcome of BIP-110's voting phase will determine whether 55% becomes the standard threshold for future upgrades. The number that settles this is whether 55% of block producers vote support before the voting window closes; if they do not, BIP-110 fails and the question of Ordinals management returns to the full development cycle.
