Just a week ago, I laid out the BIP-110 saga in brutal detail: the proposal to kill Ordinals and Runes had mustered roughly 0.31% of total hashrate support. Major mining pools were conspicuously absent. Node support sat at a measly 2-3%. Jon Atack, a long-time Bitcoin Core contributor, had warned everyone to avoid Bitcoin transfers during the second week of August.

I thought that was the story. I was wrong.

The 17 Blocks That Changed Everything

On July 9, Farside Investors reported something that sent shockwaves through monitoring circles: 17 new signaling blocks had been mined. Automatic alerts triggered across the network. Bitcoin was trading near $62,821 at the time.

Now, let’s be clear about what 17 blocks means. The proposal needs 1,109 flagged blocks out of 2,016 in a two-week window to activate. Seventeen is a rounding error. But here’s what’s interesting: after months of absolute silence—after the first and only block signaling support was mined by Ocean pool back in March 2026—someone decided to start signaling again.

Who? We don’t know yet. That’s what makes this fascinating. The mystery miner—or miners—hasn’t come forward. But the timing, just weeks before the August forced activation phase, suggests someone is positioning themselves for what comes next.

“Too Late to Cancel”—Dashjr Doubles Down

The drama escalated further when Luke Dashjr responded to calls to withdraw the proposal with brutal finality. When someone pointed out that Michael Saylor hadn’t mentioned BIP-110 directly in his recent comments, Dashjr shot back: “Saylor didn’t say anything about BIP110. And no, it’s too late to cancel BIP110.”

Think about that for a moment. A proposal with less than 1% miner support, zero meaningful hashpower, and a developer community that has largely rejected it—and its primary author is refusing to back down. Dashjr went even further on July 8, framing the proposal as existential: “If BIP110 fails, Bitcoin fails with it.”

The Saylor Factor

Michael Saylor, meanwhile, threw a grenade into the debate on July 8. He declared that Bitcoin has “no spam problem,” citing average transaction fees of just $0.30. “After a decade of blockspace fears and non-monetary-use panics, Bitcoin still has no spam problem,” Saylor said on X.

The response was immediate and vicious. A user identified as “Udi #BIP-110” shot back: “nobody is using the chain, for any use case, whatsoever.” Former Wall Street trader Fred Krueger also pushed back, warning that market forces wouldn’t solve quantum computing risks.

Here’s the thing about Saylor’s argument: he’s right about the fees. One satoshi per virtual byte for instant settlements during low congestion. Lightning transactions carrying a variable fee of 0.0004% of the amount transferred. The mempool has dropped sharply over the past year.

But the critics have a point too. Low fees reflect low demand—not network efficiency. And if nobody’s using the chain for non-monetary purposes, why does BIP-110 need to exist at all?

The 21 Million Cap Heresy

Just when I thought the debate couldn’t get more contentious, Eli Ben-Sasson—CEO of StarkWare and co-founder of the science behind Zcash—dropped a bombshell on July 7.

He argued that Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap “doesn’t make sense” because users lose private keys over time. His proposal? Replace it with a maximum issuance rate of 4% per year.

The numbers behind his argument aren’t trivial. Hardware wallet maker Ledger estimates that up to 4 million BTC are permanently inaccessible—nearly a fifth of everything that will ever exist. Roughly 20 million of the 21 million total have already been mined, meaning the network has issued more than 95% of everything it will ever produce. Strip out the lost coins and the effective supply may already sit closer to 16-17 million.

The Bitcoin community rejected the idea almost immediately—treating the 21 million limit as the network’s inviolable social contract. But the fact that a cryptographer of Ben-Sasson’s stature would even suggest such a change tells you everything about the current state of Bitcoin discourse.

The Core Privacy Scare

Amid all this governance chaos, Bitcoin Core developers quietly released version 31.1 on July 9. The update patches a critical privacy vulnerability that risked exposing node operators’ clearnet IP addresses when using the -privatebroadcast feature.

The vulnerability was formally disclosed on June 6—and it took seven weeks to patch. Beyond the security fix, the maintenance release resolves a LevelDB database engine flaw causing excessive disk operations. Node operators must fully shut down before installing the new binaries.

In my experience covering Bitcoin’s development, security patches to the core client are treated as critical infrastructure events. The fact that this one flew under the radar while BIP-110 consumed all the oxygen tells you everything about where the community’s attention is focused right now.

The eCash Wildcard

And then there’s the fork nobody’s talking about—eCash. Backed by Drivechain architect Paul Sztorc, this is a planned hard fork scheduled for block 964,000—expected around August 21. Unlike BIP-110, eCash doesn’t require consensus from the existing Bitcoin network. It will airdrop a 1:1 equivalent of BTC to holders at the time of the fork.

The timing creates a perfect storm: BIP-110’s mandatory signaling window begins in early August, followed closely by the eCash fork. Two forks, two different visions of Bitcoin’s future, one month.

Where We Stand

The numbers as of early July: cumulative signaling for BIP-110 sits at just 0.42% through July 2. The proposal needs 55%. The math doesn’t lie.

But the math isn’t the whole story. BIP-110 has become a proxy war for something larger: a battle over who gets to define what Bitcoin is. Supporters see data-heavy activity—Ordinals, Runes, inscriptions—as spam that raises storage and bandwidth demands and risks shifting Bitcoin away from peer-to-peer money. Opponents see any content restriction as a dangerous precedent that hands subjective judgment over transaction content to protocol rules.

The August deadline is coming. The 17 signaling blocks suggest someone is preparing for a fight. And with the eCash fork lurking in the same month, we’re looking at the most consequential period for Bitcoin governance since the blocksize wars.

The Bear Case

A contentious fork in August—whether from BIP-110’s forced activation or the eCash chain split—would create confusion, undermine confidence, and potentially trigger significant sell pressure. The fact that a proposal with less than 1% support can still threaten network stability is a governance failure. And the 17 signaling blocks suggest the battle isn’t over—someone is positioning for a fight.

The Bullish Case

David Bailey, CEO of Bitcoin custodian Nakamoto, declared on July 4 that the BIP-110 controversy ultimately failed, resulting in an “extremely positive” outcome for Bitcoin. He described it as a complex, multi-year information warfare campaign that couldn’t gain significant hash rate support—accounting for “less than 1%”. “Technical rationality and economic consensus will ultimately determine the network’s direction,” he said. The system isn’t perfect—but it’s working exactly as designed.

Summary

The BIP-110 saga entered a new phase this week with 17 mysterious signaling blocks mined on July 9, Luke Dashjr declaring it’s “too late to cancel,” and Michael Saylor insisting Bitcoin has “no spam problem” with fees at $0.30. Meanwhile, StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson reopened the 21 million cap debate, Bitcoin Core patched a critical privacy vulnerability, and the eCash fork looms in August alongside BIP-110’s forced activation. The network isn’t just debating its future—it’s preparing for a month that could define it for the next decade.