Luke Dashjr removed from Bitcoin BIP process after BIP-110 fails

Luke Dashjr, one of Bitcoin’s longest-serving developers, has been formally removed from the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal editorial team after a failed soft-fork attempt and allegations of procedural misconduct. The decision, executed on August 10, marks one of the most dramatic governance actions in Bitcoin Core’s history.

The removal caps a turbulent week that began when BIP-110, Dashjr’s controversial proposal to limit non-financial data storage on the Bitcoin network, started mandatory signaling on August 8 at block 961,632. The proposal attracted just 2.53% of miner support. Its minority chain produced exactly two blocks before stalling entirely.

How the removal unfolded

Mark Erhardt, known in the Bitcoin community as Murch, formally recommended Dashjr’s removal on August 9, one day after BIP-110’s signaling began its rapid collapse. Erhardt is himself a BIP editor, making this an internal action rather than an outside intervention.

Erhardt’s case rested on three pillars: irregularities in how BIP-110 was handled through the editorial process, Dashjr’s near-total absence from regular editorial duties, and conflicts of interest related to his dual role as both a BIP editor and the author of a contentious proposal moving through that same editorial pipeline.

The numbers on editorial contribution are striking. From April 2024 through the date of removal, Dashjr contributed less than 1% of editor comments on BIPs.

Support for the removal came from notable figures in Bitcoin development. Matt Corallo, one of Bitcoin Core’s most prolific contributors, backed the decision. So did Olaoluwa Osuntokun, known as “roasbeef” and the co-founder of Lightning Labs.

The remaining BIP editorial team now consists of five members: Bryan Bishop, Jon Atack, Mark Erhardt, Olaoluwa Osuntokun, and Ruben Somsen.

BIP-110 and the data storage wars

BIP-110 aimed to restrict the storage of non-financial data on Bitcoin’s blockchain, targeting Ordinals inscriptions, BRC-20 tokens, and other data-heavy use cases through a soft fork — a backward-compatible change to Bitcoin’s consensus rules that would have effectively made certain types of data storage invalid.

The mining community’s response was decisive. With only 2.53% of hashrate signaling support, the proposal never came close to the threshold needed for activation. The minority chain’s two-block lifespan before stalling made BIP-110’s failure about as unambiguous as consensus rejections get.

What raised eyebrows among other developers wasn’t just the proposal itself but how it moved through the BIP process. The allegation is that Dashjr leveraged his position as an editor to advance his own proposal in ways that bypassed normal procedural safeguards.

A pattern, not an isolated incident

This wasn’t Dashjr’s first clash with the broader Bitcoin development community over governance norms. In 2025, a DNS seed that Dashjr managed was removed from Bitcoin Core after it was found to violate the project’s neutrality policies. DNS seeds are critical infrastructure components that help new Bitcoin nodes find peers on the network.

Dashjr has not accepted the removal quietly. He rejected the allegations against him and characterized the action as an abuse of power, arguing that Bitcoin Core’s contributors lack the authority to remove BIP editors.

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