A 12-Year-Old Bitcoin Dispute Returns as BIP-110 Divides the Community

Nakamoto CEO David Bailey has resurfaced a 2014 controversy involving developer Luke Dashjr. He argues the record disqualifies Dashjr from steering Bitcoin (BTC) as the BIP-110 fight intensifies.

The claim revives a dispute over blacklists Dashjr once built into a version of Bitcoin’s software. It resurfaces as he backs BIP-110, his proposed one-year ban on storing images and other non-money data on Bitcoin.

Bailey Points to a 12-Year-Old Blacklisting Incident

On Friday, Bailey wrote that Dashjr secretly added Bitcoin address blacklists to the Gentoo Linux package he maintained in 2014.

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The 2014 patch shipped on by default, blocking payments to gambling services such as SatoshiDice from the Gentoo build of Bitcoin software. Node operators noticed only when transactions failed, and the backlash filled a widely shared thread.

Even then, a fellow Core developer said such changes belonged in a separately named version, not the default software.

Supporters stress the context. Dashjr reversed the default, made it optional, and apologized, and Bitcoin Core never shipped the blacklists. That same developer now drives Bitcoin’s anti-spam rule change.

BIP-110 Turns an Old Dispute Into a Trust Test

The rule targets Ordinals inscriptions, the images and text people embed on Bitcoin, which backers call spam. Dashjr runs Bitcoin Knots, an alternative version of the software that already enforces the limit.

Knots powered about a fifth of the network’s public computers, known as nodes, during 2025’s spam fight, data shows. He calls the fight existential, warning Bitcoin fails if the proposal fails.

Miners can back the change by flagging the blocks they mine. BIP-110 needs 55% of them, below Bitcoin’s usual 95% bar. Yet support has stayed under 1% since December 2025, never topping 0.79%.

Even so, computers running the software plan to reject any block that withholds support from early August. The move echoes 2017, when users forced an upgrade called SegWit the same way. That push carried broad market backing. BIP-110 does not.

Prominent voices oppose the plan. MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor called it a self-inflicted protocol risk. Blockstream’s Adam Back warned of fork risk that could strand supporters on a separate chain.

Bailey also argued that Wall Street misjudges the stakes. If the network ever split, he asked, which side would the cash-settled futures on the CME exchange treat as the real Bitcoin?

“very clear to me the Wall Street universe has no idea how Bitcoin governance works. Like which chaintip does a cash settled Bitcoin future traded on the CME settle against? Whether TradFi like it or not, they’re locked in the insane asylum with all of us,” Bailey added.

Bitcoin’s market value sits near $1.3 trillion. Critics say that trillion-dollar market value should not hinge on one developer’s preferences.

Dashjr is not Bitcoin Core’s sole maintainer, a role shared among several contributors. His direct influence runs through Knots and the people who run it.

The activation window opens in early August. Back has dismissed that deadline as the road to a minority altcoin, a small spinoff few would follow. The 2014 fight now stands in for a bigger question, who gets to shape Bitcoin.

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