Bitcoin’s core governance model is under pressure from a proposed rule change that critics say would shatter the high-consensus precedent set by past upgrades. On What Bitcoin Did, analyst Mr Hodl argued the 55% activation threshold proposed for BIP110 doesn’t seek consensus - it seeks to hijack the network. Historically, protocol upgrades like Taproot required 90% or 95% hash-rate signaling to ensure unity. This new low bar, he warned, turns a soft fork into a 51% attack. “A narrow majority could effectively hijack the protocol, potentially driven by legal pressure on a few large U.S.-based mining pools,” Mr Hodl said. The catastrophic precedent, he argued, would prove Bitcoin can be co-opted by lawyers and pool operators.
Proponents are trying to manufacture consent by misrepresenting history. Mr Hodl contrasted this effort with the 2017 User Activated Soft Fork for SegWit, which had 95% network consensus and was a genuine response to a mining monopoly weaponizing the BIP9 process. The current push, he contends, lacks support from exchanges, major miners, or the economic majority. “It is an attempt to bend history to fit a current agenda that the market hasn’t asked for.”
“The 55% activation threshold proposed for BIP110 is a radical departure from Bitcoin’s security standards. This threshold turns a soft fork into a 51% attack.”
- Mr Hodl, What Bitcoin Did
Data analyst Wicked scrutinized the on-chain signaling for BIP110 and found it sparse and suspicious. His dashboard tracking shows a peak of only seven signaling blocks in one period, which he attributes partly to rented hash power. He points to massive, overnight spikes in BIP110-supporting node counts as evidence of a coordinated bluff, likely virtual instances spun up on AWS to pad numbers. “These aren’t real users migrating their software,” Wicked argued. Real network growth shows a gradual transition; these spikes are cheap Sybil attacks designed to trick miners with hollow support. A node only matters, both hosts noted, if it’s connected to an economic actor like a wallet or exchange.
The operational reality is that a fork with such low hash power would quickly fail. Wicked explained that BIP110's mandatory signaling period starts at block height 961,632, but the forked chain would immediately stall. Block times would stretch from minutes into days or weeks, making it unusable while the legacy chain maintains a massive lead. Mr Hodl concluded that the effort is less about scaling and more about an ego-driven attempt to dictate terms to a decentralized system. If the rules don’t fit, he said, the solution is simple: fork the chain. Trying to force a change without overwhelming consensus isn't an upgrade - it's an attack on the protocol's foundation.
