The BIP 110 Null Vote: Why Michael Saylor and 0% Miners Just Reinforced Bitcoin's Core Covenant

It was a quiet Monday morning for most of the crypto world—until the headline crossed my desk: "Michael Saylor opposes BIP 110, calls for Bitcoin neutrality over transaction filtering." The data underneath was even more striking: miner support at 0%. Not 10%, not 5%. Zero. That number isn't just a poll result. It's a signal. A signal that Bitcoin's governance, for all its messy human dynamics, still holds a line that many thought was blurring. I've spent years watching protocols promise decentralization and then quietly bend the rules. This was different. This was a collective 'no' from the very people who secure the network. And it deserves more than a casual shrug. Let's set the stage. BIP 110—a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal—aims to introduce transaction filtering at the consensus layer. In plain English, it wants nodes and miners to reject transactions that carry certain data patterns, specifically the inscriptions created by the Ordinals protocol. For context, Ordinals turned Bitcoin into a home for NFTs by embedding data into satoshis, the smallest unit of BTC. This has been a blessing for some—new utility, new fees for miners—and a curse for others, who see it as spam clogging the block space intended for financial transfers. The proposal's advocates argue that filtering restores Bitcoin's original purpose: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. But its opponents, led by Michael Saylor, see something far more dangerous: a crack in the wall of neutrality that has made Bitcoin the most trusted asset in the world. To understand why this matters, you have to appreciate the philosophical bedrock beneath Bitcoin's code. It's not just a ledger; it's a social contract. The rule that anyone can broadcast any valid transaction, as long as they pay the fee, is arguably the most sacred clause in that contract. BIP 110 proposes to write an exception into the protocol: 'We reserve the right to decide what kind of transaction is valid.' That may sound reasonable when the target is jpegs of cartoon cats, but it opens a door. Once you empower miners and nodes to filter based on content, you invite a future where 'content' includes political speech, financial activity, or anything that a powerful minority deems undesirable. People first, protocol second. Always. But here, the protocol's neutrality is the very thing that protects people from gatekeepers. Now, the core of this story is not just a philosophical debate. It's a governance stress test that passed with flying colors. As a DAO Governance Architect, I've watched countless 'decentralized' projects fail because they lacked a credible mechanism to resist change. Bitcoin's governance is often criticized as slow, messy, and influenced by a few large miners. But this episode shows the opposite: the system rejected a proposal that threatened its foundational value—not because of a vote, but because of a convergence of economic and ethical incentives. Miners, who are often painted as greedy and short-sighted, chose to preserve long-term trust over short-term gains. Let's do the math: Ordinals transactions have generated millions in fees for miners over the past year. By opposing BIP 110, miners are effectively saying, 'We'll keep earning those fees, but more importantly, we'll keep the network neutral.' That's a mature decision. It reminds me of a lesson I learned during the 2020 DeFi summer, when I watched a promising lending protocol pivot its governance to favor a few whales, only to see its TVL evaporate within weeks. Integrity is not just a nice word—it's the only asset that retains value when the market turns cold. Trust is earned in bear markets. And here, miners earned it. But let's not paint too rosy a picture. There's a contrarian angle that keeps me up at night. Michael Saylor is not just a thought leader; he's a billionaire with a massive Bitcoin treasury. His public opposition carries weight that a regular developer's doesn't. When Saylor speaks, the market listens. Is this really the voice of the community, or is it the voice of capital oligarchy? The 0% miner support seems to validate his stance, but it's worth asking: would miners have opposed BIP 110 if the biggest holder of BTC hadn't already condemned it? We can't know. What we do know is that governance in Bitcoin is not a pure democracy; it's a noisy, power-laden negotiation between miners, developers, and large holders. The fact that this negotiation produced a good outcome (preserving neutrality) doesn't mean the process is perfect. Empathy is the ultimate security layer, and that applies to governance as much as code. We need to empathize with the minority voices who may feel silenced by the Saylor effect, even if they agree with the outcome. Another blind spot: the same neutrality that protects Ordinals also protects illicit transactions. Bitcoin doesn't discriminate between a ransom payment to a cybercriminal and a donation to a humanitarian cause. As regulators tighten their grip on crypto, the absence of any filtering mechanism may become a liability. The contrarian view is that BIP 110, while dangerous in its current form, was a response to a real problem: the degradation of Bitcoin's block space for non-financial use. If Ordinals continue to grow and push transaction fees to unaffordable levels, the call for filtering won't disappear—it will intensify. And next time, the proposal might be more sophisticated, or the miner support might tip. That's the volatile edge of consensus. We celebrate today, but we must prepare for tomorrow. So where does this leave us? For now, Bitcoin's covenant stands. The network remains a permissionless, neutral settlement layer. The BIP 110 episode has, ironically, strengthened that narrative. But as a practitioner who has seen governance battles unfold across multiple protocols—from the ICO audits I did in 2017 to the AI-DAO projects I advise today—I know that every victory is provisional. The real work is in the vigilance of the community. We need to keep watching the miner signal charts. We need to ensure that the next challenge doesn't catch us off guard. And we need to remember that the most valuable asset in crypto is not the technology, but the trust that people place in it. People first, protocol second. Always. In the end, this is not just about Ordinals or transaction filtering. It's about whether a decentralized system can maintain its identity under pressure. The answer, for now, is yes. But the bear market teaches us that trust is earned, not given. Let's earn it every day.