Lyn Alden on the Bitcoin Fashion Debate: It's Not in My Top 10 Important Issues

• BIP 110 does not pose an existential risk to Bitcoin, according to Alden.
• This aligns with the views of figures like Adam Back and Jameson Lopp.

The reason I haven't written about BIP [110] on my timeline or in an article (neither for nor against) is that I read it and it hasn't made it into my top ten priority topics to focus on, said Alden, who is the author of the eighth best-selling book on Amazon about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and one of the most well-known investors in traditional finance, alongside Michael Saylor, who defends the technological qualities of bitcoin as money or a store of value.

The reason Alden decided to remain silent until now on the topic of BIP-110 is that she does not believe it is an existential risk to Bitcoin. She elaborates on a second reason: she does not consider this bitcoin improvement proposal (which is what BIP means in English), which could lead to a fork, to solve the issue it claims to address: spam in the network's blocks.

This whole discussion about the fork is basically a debate about which bucket to put spam in, as there is no proposal on the table to substantially reduce spam or significantly increase the cost of the cheapest method to do so. Lyn Alden, author of Broken Money.

Alden has a fundamentally technical critique. She thinks that since spam can be introduced in various outputs and operation codes of Bitcoin, the scope of BIP-110 is low.

That's why I didn't bother to talk about it over the last year. I saw tweets tagging me regularly asking why I don't talk about it, people saying it's the most important thing and that I'm not discussing it. It's not the most important. I had few reasons to talk about a low-consensus fork that does not materially reduce spam. Lyn Alden, author of Broken Money.

But Luke Dashjr, the main maintainer of Bitcoin Knots, corrects her by implying that it is a matter of degree, not a binary one, and that Bitcoin Knots already materially reduces spam. BIP110 is not for spam. It is for the zero-day vulnerability that Core30 intentionally introduced by allowing data storage as a new use case, says Dashjr.

While through Bitcoin Knots, the alternative node client to Bitcoin Core, antispammers limit to 34 bytes (except in OP_RETURN, which allows up to 83 bytes) the outputs where arbitrary data can be inscribed, figures like Peter Todd, Adam Back, and Jameson Lopp believe that there will always be workarounds to introduce more spam into Bitcoin, because its permissionless protocol and consensus rules cannot block all types of arbitrary data without breaking the functionality of the protocol.

But the reason why the topic was decided to be debuted is of a social nature. It has to do with the pressure that, according to the author of Broken Money, defenders of the antispam proposal exert on social media, who are particularly concerned about the inclusion, with its legal repercussions, of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in Bitcoin blocks.

This pressure is expressed in what Alden calls: the fallacy of the castral mote. Paraphrasing her, this is a style of debate in which an aggressive position is asserted and then retreated to a more defensible position when the aggressive one does not work, deliberately shifting from one stance to another as convenient.

Many leaders of this movement, and by association their followers, have been saying that Bitcoin is under a significant attack from spam, that it is vulnerable to illegal images, that bitcoin will fail without this fork, that nodes will become unmanageable, or that this fork will undoubtedly occur. That, collectively, is the aggressive position (...). And when I say: well, no, it doesn't do that, I don't consider this an emergency, and even if it were an emergency, I wouldn't consider it remotely a solution, but I am open to discussions about long-term spam management, people respond saying look at the BIP, it's so soft, it admits how limited it is for spam, it's not really about spam, etc. That is the semi-defensible position. Lyn Alden, author of Broken Money.

Alden thus seems to align with the defense of Bitcoin's ossification and protocol neutrality and with the idea that there is something more dangerous than spam: the push to change bitcoin rules without respecting the principle of first gathering near-total consensus from the network.

As we reported earlier, only a threshold of 55% acceptance is required to activate a soft fork of Bitcoin that implements BIP-110. However, data indicates that this fork is far from happening: miner support for the measure remains below 1%. The deadline for mandatory signaling is the end of August 2026.

Disclaimer: This content is provided for general branding and informational purposes only and doesn't constitute financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. Any events, rewards, online events, or related information mentioned herein should not be considered a recommendation, solicitation, or invitation to purchase, sell, trade, or otherwise deal in any crypto assets or to use any services. Crypto assets are highly volatile and may result in loss. WEEX services and online events may not be available in all regions and are subject to applicable laws, regulations, and eligibility requirements. You are responsible for ensuring that your use of WEEX services complies with local laws and for carefully assessing the risks before participating in any crypto-related activities.