[DigitalToday reporter Yoonseo Lee] Michael Saylor (마이클 세일러), chairman of Strategy, has recently broadened the debate over changes to the Bitcoin protocol into an issue of the inviolability of Bitcoin’s consensus rules.

On July 28 (local time), blockchain media outlet Decrypt reported that in nine posts on X, formerly Twitter, Saylor likened Bitcoin’s consensus rules to a “constitution” and argued that attempts to rewrite them infringe users’ economic rights.

Saylor stressed that Bitcoin has already won but now must defend that victory. He argued that Bitcoin’s biggest threat is not an external enemy but corruption from within, and that some forces use pretexts to change the rules and strip away economic rights.

His remarks go a step further from his existing opposition to the recently controversial Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, BIP-110. BIP-110 is a proposed temporary soft fork that would restrict for about 1 year how non-financial data, such as Ordinals inscriptions, are inserted into the Bitcoin blockchain. Saylor has previously published a piece titled “110 reasons why BIP-110 is a bad idea,” criticising the proposal as undermining Bitcoin’s neutrality and potentially setting a precedent for censorship.

This time, he grouped not only BIP-110 but also covenant and block size expansion proposals into the same category. Covenant is a feature that restricts, at the transaction stage, how Bitcoin can be used in the future, while block size expansion is an idea to raise the per-block data limit to increase transaction processing capacity.

Saylor characterised these proposals as “different ideas, same crime.” He argued that while some proposals restrict transactions that have properly paid fees and others add new features or call for larger block capacity, they are the same in that certain groups change the rules and shift costs and risks onto all users.

He said Bitcoin’s consensus rules are Bitcoin’s constitution, and stressed that changing them for the convenience of a particular group infringes the economic rights of current users as well as future generations. He also said protocol changes should be rare and conservative, made only when there is a clear need, not for ambition or convenience.

BIP-110, at the centre of the debate, was written by a pseudonymous developer, Daeseon Om, and Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr participated in drafting the original and providing advice. The proposal has support from an anti-spam camp centred on Bitcoin Knots users and some node operators.

They argue that Bitcoin should focus on its original purpose as peer-to-peer electronic cash, not as a means to permanently store arbitrary data such as Ordinals, tokens and images. Their logic is that miners receive a one-off fee in exchange for including arbitrary data in blocks, but node operators as a whole must bear the cost of storing and transmitting and verifying that data over the long term.

Criticism of Saylor’s argument also came from within the camp opposing BIP-110. Fred Krueger said BIP-110, covenant and block size expansion are proposals in different directions, and argued that lumping them together as a single force or single agenda is logically strained.

The prospects for BIP-110 activation remain unclear. Under the proposal, the miners’ early signalling threshold is 1,109 out of 2,016 blocks, or 55 percent. The mandatory signalling window is set from block 961,632 to block 963,647, followed by lock-in and activation procedures.

The current miner signalling rate falls well short of the activation threshold. As a result, the Bitcoin community is expected for the time being to focus more on a principles debate over the legitimacy of protocol changes and how far consensus rules can be altered, rather than on whether activation will happen in the short term.

Bitcoin has won. Now it must survive victory. Its gravest threat is not an enemy at the gates, but corruption from within: factions that invent pretexts, rewrite the rules, and seize economic rights until freedom becomes permission and law becomes loot.