BIP-110 failure shows Bitcoin would be 'almost impossible to reproduce,' Plan B Network director says

Giacomo Zucco, director of Plan B Network, said on The Block’s The Starting Block podcast that the failed BIP-110 Bitcoin fork offered an "educational" lesson in how difficult it would be to recreate Bitcoin from scratch today, arguing that the conditions around the network's early development would be almost impossible to replicate.

BIP-110, championed by longtime Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr, looked to change Bitcoin's consensus rules to curb what supporters considered spam on the network.

However, the proposal failed to garner much support, with nodes running BIP-110 splitting from the main Bitcoin network over the weekend and creating a separate blockchain with a small fraction of its hash power. The breakaway chain initially stalled after two blocks, though Zucco noted it had since sputtered back to life, reaching four blocks by the time of the interview.

Dashjr, one of Bitcoin Core's earliest contributors, has continued to try to keep the fork alive, including trying to change its proof-of-work algorithm. Zucco said those efforts show how launching a new network under today's conditions is fundamentally different from Bitcoin's beginnings.

According to Zucco, Dashjr tried to randomly select a new PoW algorithm from "one of several algorithms" for the BIP-110 Bitcoin fork by using the last character of the next Testnet4 block hash. But when participants began generating additional testnet blocks to interfere with the selection, it forced Dashjr to call it off and restart it, he said.

"So it became super centralized under him," Zucco said. "He's basically calling the shots on Discord. That's the highest level of centralization you can imagine, and that shows that there is no way we can reproduce Bitcoin in a fair way."

Bitcoin's 'immaculate conception'

Zucco argued that even honest attempts to launch a cryptocurrency fairly today face obstacles that Bitcoin was mostly able to avoid during its formative years

He pointed to previous attempts at "fair launches," recalling instances where people looked to get early access to specialized hardware that would give them an advantage in spite of developer efforts to make a new token's distribution equitable.

"So even when you try to do it fair, you cannot do it fair anymore; this is why we are calling it the 'immaculate conception' of Bitcoin," Zucco said.

By contrast, "Bitcoin was created and maintained for a few years outside of the spotlight of markets, governments, government agencies, disruption, intentional disruption, attempts by government agencies, speculators, over-speculators, gamblers, trolls, people that just want to be annoying, to have fun by disrupting your process,” Zucco said.

"This would be almost impossible to reproduce," he added. "So also a pretty educational event."

'Moral panic'

Zucco described BIP-110 as a "very complex social phenomenon" that was several large disputes within the Bitcoin community rolled up into one. This included disagreements over network spam, Bitcoin Core governance and the roles of nodes and miners.

He did see some of those debates as legitimate. Zucco called the discussion over spam healthy and said concerns surrounding aspects of Bitcoin Core's governance were worth examining.

However, Zucco was critical of claims that something like BIP-110 was urgently needed because illegal material could be encoded on the blockchain, which could make node operators open to legal consequences.

"That was the thing that created the fake sense of emergency ... and made people rush into something that has to happen now," Zucco said.

"When you enter the rhetoric that Bitcoin is dead if you don't do my thing, then you know that the sh*tcoin fork is going to happen," he added. "It turns a technical or economic discussion into this kind of moral panic."

Dashjr removal as BIP editor

The fallout ended up extending beyond the fork itself. Earlier this week, Dashjr was removed as a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal editor following a vote by other Bitcoin developers, with the motion citing his role in BIP-110 and raising conflict-of-interest concerns over his use of editorial privileges. Dashjr was one of the longest serving BIP editors.

Despite opposing BIP-110, Zucco criticized Dashjr's removal, saying it was "a wrong move at the wrong time."

"It doesn't make a material change or a relevant one, and it seems like retribution," Zucco said. "Retribution for being wrong."

He said the timing would likely only fuel claims among BIP-110 supporters that Bitcoin development had become centralized. 

"There was no need to do that," Zucco added. "It just gives more fuel to the fire of conspiracy theories about this kind of centralization capture of Bitcoin."