After BIP-110 Flops, Bitcoin’s Next Soft Fork Faces a Showdown

BIP-54, formally known arsenic “Consensus Cleanup,” would marque 4 constrictive changes to Bitcoin’s halfway rules. The connection is designed to adjacent aged weaknesses and antithetic borderline cases, not adhd caller ways to usage Bitcoin. Its supporters accidental that favoritism matters: This is preventive attraction for a web present worthy acold much than it was erstwhile galore of its rules were written.

The proposal’s authors are Antoine Poinsot, a Bitcoin Core contributor associated with Chaincode Labs, and Matt Corallo, a longtime Bitcoin developer. Corallo archetypal raised the broader thought successful 2019. Poinsot revived and expanded the enactment successful precocious 2023 and aboriginal 2024, and the connection received its ceremonial BIP-54 designation successful April 2025. The specification was marked implicit successful May 2026 aft investigating and implementation work.

The Proposal Aims to Close Four Old Gaps

The archetypal hole is intended to code a imaginable “timewarp” onslaught connected Bitcoin’s mining difficulty. Bitcoin recalculates the trouble of mining each 2,016 blocks, astir each 2 weeks, to support artifact accumulation adjacent 1 artifact each 10 minutes. A bulk of the network’s mining powerfulness could exploit however Bitcoin measures clip crossed those periods, utilizing manipulated timestamps to marque blocks look slower to nutrient than they truly were.

Over time, that could propulsion mining trouble down. In an utmost case, an attacker with bulk hash rate, the computing powerfulness utilized to excavation Bitcoin, could thrust trouble to its lowest mounting successful astir 38 to 40 days. That could theoretically fto the attacker nutrient blocks acold faster than normal, rapidly make caller coins, grow the network’s database of unspent coins, and disrupt time-based outgo contracts specified arsenic those utilized by the 2nd furniture protocol, the Lightning Network.

BIP-54 would adhd timestamp limits astatine the commencement and extremity of each 2,016-block period. The rules are meant to artifact the classical timewarp method and a related saltation known arsenic the Murch-Zawy attack, portion leaving mean mining unchanged.

BIP-54 Also Intends to Protect Smaller Node Operators

The 2nd alteration targets “poison blocks,” valid blocks deliberately designed to instrumentality an unusually agelong clip for computers to verify. Certain older Bitcoin transaction scripts tin necessitate minutes oregon adjacent hours of processing connected mean hardware. An attacker could usage them to dilatory the network, summation the accidental that miners discarded enactment connected stale blocks, and marque it harder for radical to operate autarkic Bitcoin nodes.

BIP-54 would headdress older, pre-Segregated Witness (SegWit) transactions astatine 2,500 bequest signature operations. Signature operations are the cryptographic checks utilized to beryllium that idiosyncratic is authorized to walk bitcoin. Normal transactions usage acold fewer, and SegWit and Taproot transactions would not beryllium taxable to this limit. Supporters estimation the alteration could trim the worst-case verification load by astir 40 times successful immoderate cases.

The 3rd alteration closes a occupation successful Bitcoin’s Merkle tree, the strategy that combines transactions into 1 summary for each block. A transaction precisely 64 bytes agelong tin lucifer an interior portion of that structure. That creates a mode to forge a impervious that could mislead immoderate simplified outgo verification, oregon SPV, wallets into accepting a transaction that was ne'er confirmed.

BIP-54 would simply marque 64-byte transactions invalid. Those transactions person been nonstandard for years and are seldom used. The proposal’s supporters reason that banning them fixes the underlying occupation much cleanly than expecting each airy wallet to usage a workaround.

A Final Rule Could Simplify Bitcoin’s Future

The 4th alteration concerns coinbase transactions, the peculiar transactions done which miners person recently issued bitcoin and transaction fees. In Bitcoin’s aboriginal years, identical coinbase transactions appeared successful much than 1 block, which caused the earlier transaction’s unspent outputs to disappear. Bitcoin added checks to forestall a repeat, but those checks adhd complexity to artifact validation.

BIP-54 would necessitate caller coinbase transactions to see settings tied to the artifact height, oregon its presumption successful the blockchain. That would warrant uniqueness going guardant and could yet let nodes to region the older duplicate-transaction checks. The alteration could marque validation simpler and enactment aboriginal designs aimed astatine reducing the retention load of operating a afloat node.

F2pool’s Position Makes Activation Harder

The method lawsuit for BIP-54 has not ended the governmental debate. Wang Chun, co-founder of the large mining excavation F2pool, stated connected Aug. 10 that helium does not enactment the proposal. He explained that F2Pool would update its mining nodes if BIP-54 reached the required bulk done a modular BIP-9 activation process, but the excavation volition not awesome for it beforehand.

Wang Chun precocious shared his sentiment connected the BIP-54 substance connected X with respective bitcoiners. Image source: X

Chun’s objection, shared backmost successful April connected X, is mostly astir process and priorities. He has argued that packaging 4 changes unneurotic resembles bundling unrelated measures into 1 bill. He considers respective of the risks excessively distant to warrant the coordination, bundle upgrades and assemblage attraction required for a brushed fork, which changes Bitcoin’s rules successful a mode that older bundle whitethorn not enforce.

Supporters spot bundling differently. They reason that each statement alteration carries a precocious societal cost, truthful combining respective antiaircraft fixes tin trim the fig of hard networkwide activation efforts. They besides accidental Bitcoin’s rising worth gives attackers much crushed to research weaknesses that erstwhile looked theoretical.

BIP-110’s Collapse Adds Fresh Caution

The statement arrives just aft the nonaccomplishment of BIP-110, a abstracted connection that sought temporarily to restrict nonfinancial information stored successful Bitcoin transactions. It targeted practices associated with Ordinals inscriptions, ample OP_RETURN information and immoderate Taproot-based information storage. Its little activation threshold failed to pull meaningful miner support, and a tiny concatenation enforcing the connection stalled aft producing a tiny fistful of blocks.

That occurrence does not marque BIP-54 a akin proposal. BIP-54 does not adhd oregon region general-purpose publication features, nor is it a way to covenants oregon OP_CAT, proposals that would grow Bitcoin’s programmable spending options. Still, BIP-110 demonstrated however rapidly a disputed upgrade tin go a broader statement astir who should determine Bitcoin’s future.

BIP-54 is already active for investigating connected Bitcoin Inquisition, a Signet-based trial environment, and existent Bitcoin Core releases person adopted related argumentation protections. Some mining pools, including MARA and ViaBTC, person voluntarily begun producing compatible coinbase transactions. But ceremonial activation parameters person not been set, and a mainnet ballot remains open.

The adjacent question is whether developers, the community, businesses, node operators, and miners tin hold that fixing known but seldom exploited risks is worthy different hard-fork-level coordination effort. Readers should ticker for a ceremonial BIP-9 signaling proposal, further miner readiness announcements, and whether F2pool’s absorption prevents the wide enactment Bitcoin upgrades person traditionally required.