BIP-110 failed to advance due to postponement of CLARITY vote

Bitcoin's "anti-spam" controversy has resurfaced: BIP-110 soft fork proposal blocked, CLARITY bill vote postponed

This week, the long-standing debate in the Bitcoin community over the "anti-spam" proposal heated up again. The BIP-110 soft fork proposal could not be moved forward because it failed to receive enough support votes. After heated discussions, the proposal stalled within hours-a result that observers had long expected given the economic reality of parallel mining on a few chains.

At the same time, U.S. lawmakers have again postponed voting on the CLARITY bill, while the market is also digesting new signals in regulation, custody security and institutional needs. In addition, Ethereum researchers have introduced a proposal to cut pledge rewards as more ETH are locked in, but critics warn that this could weaken incentives for validators and the broader ecosystem.

Key Points

BIP-110 's anti-spam solution failed to attract enough miners 'signal support and quickly stalled on a few chains.

The U.S. Senate's procedural vote on the CLARITY bill has been scheduled for September, rather than forcing it forward before the August recess.

Security issues with Bitcoin hardware wallets prompted a "red team" of volunteers to use artificial intelligence to conduct vulnerability scanning.

Ethereum's proposed EIP-8363 will cut verifier rewards more sharply as pledge participation rates rise, a move that has sparked strong opposition from some in the DeFi community.

The spot Bitcoin ETF recorded its strongest weekly inflows in about four months, underscoring the recovery of institutional interest.

Bitcoin BIP-110 anti-spam branch stalled

BIP-110 is a soft fork proposal aimed at reducing "non-financial transactions" on Bitcoin (explicitly targeting Ordinals-related activities). Its supporters had hoped that the proposal would move from discussion to implementation. However, after long and intense discussions, the proposal was declared "virtually dead in the womb" due to extremely low support among miners.

According to relevant reports, the BIP-110 received only about 2.5% support before entering the mandatory signaling phase on Saturday. As a result, it forked out a minority chain that produced only two blocks in eight hours and then stalled.

From an economic perspective, critics argue that the same limitations apply to mining parallel chains remain: difficulty is unlikely to improve significantly, and miners still have to bear the costs of operating on new branches. The difficulty adjustment mechanism requires successfully mining an additional full difficulty cycle (another 2,014 blocks) to change the economy-and a few chains fail to achieve this goal.

The battle between governance and "neutrality" continues

The technical failure of this branch has not ended the widespread debate about what goals Bitcoin should optimize. Opponents view BIP-110 as a design review that they believe conflicts with established norms the network has established around neutrality and consensus. The proposal has also met with opposition from well-known Bitcoin advocates.

Previously, it was reported that Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor said he understood the goal of reducing spam activity, but believed that this approach could threaten Bitcoin's neutrality and underlying consensus rules. Blockstream CEO Adam Back also warned that consensus-level changes could damage Bitcoin's credibility and introduce risks, such as making certain unspent transaction outputs unspent.

Institutional ripples have also emerged within the Bitcoin ecosystem. After the debate, a core Bitcoin developer proposed removing BIP-110 supporter Luke Dashjr from his position as BIP editor, highlighting the politicization of "anti-spam" issues in governance-related circles.

CLARITY Act momentum delayed until September

In the U.S. policy area, the path of progress of the CLARITY Act has changed again. According to related reports, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott said a procedural vote on the bill should be taken "without problems" before the August recess. Senator Cynthia Lummis also hinted at the possibility of a last-minute push.

However, Senate Majority Leader John Thune refused to force immediate action and scheduled a vote to end the debate for September 15, postponing any practical possibility of passing the bill before senators recess in August. Thune said he had "worked with the bill's sponsors" and praised Lummis's role, while noting that the bill would be scheduled for review after lawmakers return.

For stakeholders trying to influence the final form of legislation, the recent window has been narrowed to what can be negotiated before voting on closing debate-particularly on ethical rules, stablecoin gains and developer protections mentioned in related reports.

Bitcoin enthusiasts upgrade AI-assisted security review

Security issues have always been a core concern for Bitcoin users, especially after multiple well-known hardware wallet incidents. According to reports, a volunteer security program called the "Bitcoin Red Team" began conducting an artificial intelligence-assisted review of open source bitcoin-related codebases and quickly expanded the scope of its discovery.

The team, composed of 16 volunteers, initially identified nearly 5,000 potential problems during rapid scans conducted mid-week. By the weekend, the report said the number had increased to 7,958, including 168 critical defects and 1,120 high-severity items.

According to sources, the plan includes AnchorWatch CEO Rob Hamilton and Bitcoin developer known as Calle. The team combines artificial intelligence tools with human reviews to search for vulnerabilities, aiming to reduce the risk of potential weaknesses in widely used codebases going undiscovered.

The report also linked the urgency of the operation to earlier wallet security incidents. Developer Coinkite said that the hacking of Coldcard's hardware wallet was related to artificial intelligence analysis of its source code. The article reiterated that more than 7,300 wallets were stolen and more than $100 million was lost due to flaws related to the randomness used in seed phrase generation, and described the incident as a major security breach that shook confidence in cold storage practices.

Faced with this crisis of trust, many Bitcoin enthusiasts have reportedly re-evaluated how to generate self-managed seed phrases. The report points out that one trend is to move to manual methods such as die-based seed generation-an attempt to reduce reliance on a single source of entropy.

Ethereum's proposal to reduce pledge rewards encounters strong resistance

At Ethereum, an equally ecosystem-sensitive debate is unfolding over circulation and verifier rewards. According to reports, researchers and developers at Ethereum have proposed a proposal called "Decreasing Circulation Destruction"(also known as EIP-8363).

According to relevant reports, the proposal will adjust the circulation so that the verifier reward will decrease more significantly as the proportion of pledged ETH increases. Specifically, once the proportion of pledged supply exceeds 50%, the reward will be completely cancelled. The current pledge participation rate is about 34%, and there are still a large number of validators waiting to enter the queue.

Proponents believe this approach helps prevent pledges from becoming too concentrated and aligns online incentives with the use of proof-of-stake security. But critics-especially in the DeFi space-worry that the change could backfire, as more ETH enter the beacon chain, pledges become less attractive, potentially leading to reduced security gains.

The report also highlighted the strong opposition of some people in the ecosystem. Mike Silagadze, founder of Ether.fi, said that if the proposal is passed, Ether.fi may withdraw from the pledge completely, which he believes will undermine decentralization, Ethereum adoption and the credibility of the network.

Bitcoin ETF hits best weekly performance in four months

Institutional positioning provides a more optimistic signal as governance debate continues at the Bitcoin protocol level. According to reports, the spot Bitcoin ETF recorded its third strongest performance since October, reflecting a recovery in institutional demand.

According to SoSoValue data cited in the article, ETF inflows reached $853.54 million-five times net inflows for the entire month of July-and the week was described as the best week since April. The Ethereum ETF is said to have added an additional $243.7 million.

Some market participants have linked the improvement in ETF funding flows to the review of hardware wallets triggered by the Coldcard incident. The report quoted Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, hinting at institutional custody links, and quoted Binance co-founder Zhao Changpeng ("CZ") in a direct statement that depositing tokens on an exchange is "statistically more secure than self-custody."

Follow-up concerns

Given that the minority branch of BIP-110 has stalled, the proposal is unlikely to return to the spotlight anytime soon, but fundamental differences over the neutrality of Bitcoin transactions remain unresolved. In the United States, the CLARITY bill voted to set the next measurable checkpoint in September, and Ethereum's EIP-8363 debate will depend on whether critics can persuade stakeholders to maintain pledge incentives without undermining DeFi participation and verifier finances.