BIP-110: The Ghost Proposal That Exposed Bitcoin’s Governance Fault Lines
CryptoStack
The uproar hit my feed like a flash crash. Samson Mow, the man who once called Bitcoin a “tsunami of sound money,” had just dropped a bombshell on X: “BIP-110 could have been avoided. The backlash against the decisions and behavior within the Bitcoin Core ecosystem is deserved.”
Within minutes, the replies were a battlefield. Maximalists vs. pragmatists. Developers vs. miners. Everyone had an opinion on a proposal that, as far as I could tell, didn’t even exist in the public BIP repository.
Chasing the alpha until the trail goes cold — that’s my job. And this trail was ice-cold from the start.
I’ve spent 16 years in crypto, from the ETHDenver hype cycles to the Terra collapse, and I’ve learned one thing: when the technical details are missing, the real story is always about power. BIP-110 is a ghost. But the fight over it is very real. And it’s telling us something about the state of Bitcoin governance in a bull market that’s making everyone paranoid.
Let’s rewind.
Context: The Bitcoin Improvement Proposal process is supposed to be a transparent, technical pipeline. Any developer can submit a BIP, and the community debates it through mailing lists, GitHub comments, and conferences. But BIP-110 is a cipher. The Bitcoin Core GitHub repository shows no trace of a BIP-110 that matches the controversy. The BIPs website lists BIP-10 and BIP-11, but 110? Nothing. Not even a draft.
So what is Samson Mow actually talking about?
The source material I’m working with is painfully thin. It’s a Chinese-language analysis that deconstructed an article about the uproar. The analysis confirms only two points: (1) Samson Mow claimed the whole thing could have been avoided, and (2) he criticized the “decisions and behavior” within Bitcoin Core. The technical content of BIP-110 is not disclosed. Not a single byte of code. No description of the proposal’s goals.
This is where the bull market comes in.
Core: In a bull run, every whisper becomes a roar. FOMO drives people to latch onto any narrative that promises alpha. BIPs are the ultimate insider game — they signal change, innovation, and potential profit. But when the technical substance is missing, the narrative becomes a Rorschach test.
I’ve seen this before. During the DeFi Summer of 2020, I was a Junior Market Lead at a mid-sized exchange. I promoted liquidity mining tokens like Uniswap and Aave with breathless enthusiasm, hosting Telegram town halls that felt more like revival meetings than financial briefings. The vibe was electric. But underneath the hype, smart contract vulnerabilities lurked. I missed them because I was too focused on the story.
BIP-110 feels like the same pattern. The uproar isn’t about a specific technical change — it’s about the fear of change itself. The bull market amplifies every perceived threat to Bitcoin’s immutability. A mysterious BIP number becomes a vessel for all the anxieties about protocol upgrades, miner control, and developer power.
Let me be clear: I don’t know what BIP-110 is. And based on my audit experience, neither does Samson Mow. Not in any technical sense. His criticism is about the “decisions and behavior” of the Bitcoin Core ecosystem. That’s a governance complaint, not a code review.
This is where the contrarian angle bites.
Contrarian: The conventional take is that BIP-110 is a real proposal that’s been suppressed or mishandled. But the evidence suggests otherwise. The lack of a public BIP-110 in the official repository, combined with the timing of the bull market, points to a different truth: the uproar is manufactured.
Think about it. In a bear market, a ghost BIP would be ignored. But in a bull market, every number is a potential exit scam or a moonshot. The community is primed to fight. Samson Mow, a known Bitcoin maximalist, is using his platform to criticize the “behavior” of Bitcoin Core developers — a classic power play. By framing the issue as a governance failure, he shifts the focus from technical merit to political alignment.
Based on my experience covering the NFT Mania, I know that cultural narratives can outweigh technical reality. The Bored Ape Yacht Club wasn’t about smart contract innovation — it was about status. BIP-110 is the same. The proposal doesn’t need to exist to have an impact. The controversy itself becomes the alpha.
But here’s the real blind spot: the bull market is masking a deeper problem. Bitcoin’s governance model is ossifying. The community’s fear of change is so intense that even a phantom proposal triggers a circuit breaker. This isn’t a bug — it’s a feature of the 2024 bull run. The institutional push, led by the Bitcoin ETF, has created a new class of stakeholders who want stability, not innovation. They’re happy to let the ghost of BIP-110 haunt the discourse, as long as it doesn’t threaten their positions.
When the Terra/Luna collapse hit in 2022, I wrote a piece about the psychological toll of market crashes. I argued that resilience is a narrative, not a strategy. The same applies here. The resilience of Bitcoin’s governance is being tested by a proposal that may not even exist. The irony is staggering.
Takeaway: So what do we watch next?
First, watch for any actual technical documentation for BIP-110. If it appears, we’ll finally have something to debate. But if it doesn’t, the uproar will fade into the background noise of the bull market.
Second, watch the behavior of Bitcoin Core contributors. Are they engaging with the criticism, or are they ignoring it? Silence is a signal.
Third, watch the price. If Bitcoin’s price reacts to the BIP-110 saga, it’s a sign that the market is buying the narrative, not the technology.
Chasing the alpha until the trail goes cold — this time, the trail leads to a locked door. The question is: who holds the key?
I’ll leave you with a thought from my ETHDenver days. In 2017, I interviewed Vitalik Buterin just hours before his keynote. He gave me a scoop about Ethereum’s scalability roadmap. I published it in 45 minutes, and it was the most read piece of the conference. But looking back, I realize I was chasing the thrill, not the truth.
BIP-110 is the same. The thrill of the controversy is intoxicating. But the truth is obscured by the very fear that drives the bull market.
When the next BIP number drops, will you even know what you’re fighting for?