XRP Ledger architect and former Ripple chief technology officer David Schwartz criticized Bitcoin Knots on Aug. 11 after the project said the Bitcoin network was “under attack” and that block production had slowed.
Summary
- David Schwartz criticized Bitcoin Knots after it described the Bitcoin network as being under attack.
- BIP-110 is officially marked Closed after its enforcing branch stalled at block 961,633 following activation.
- OCEAN data shows the BIP-110 branch remains stuck at block 961,633 roughly 59 hours later.
- Bitcoin Knots says a new proof-of-work algorithm will be selected Tuesday through deterministic random selection.
- Luke Dashjr lost BIP editor privileges Monday after developers raised concerns about his BIP-110 involvement.
Schwartz responded in a post, asking whether the message was intended to mislead people who did not understand the context and saying the claim should be condemned.
The dispute centers on BIP-110, whose enforcing nodes split from Bitcoin’s dominant chain when mandatory signaling began at block 961,632. The branch produced blocks 961,632 and 961,633 before stalling. The official BIP repository now marks the proposal Closed, citing the chain split and stalled mining.
Bitcoin BIP-110 branch remains frozen
OCEAN’s BIP-110 mining dashboard still showed block 961,633 as the latest block on Tuesday, roughly 59 hours after it was mined. The endpoint displayed several exahashes per second of mining power, but no third block had appeared.
The split occurred after only 51 of the previous 2,016 Bitcoin blocks signaled BIP-110, equal to 2.53%, far below its 55% voluntary threshold. As covered in earlier fork monitoring, the dominant chain continued advancing while the enforcing branch inherited Bitcoin’s existing difficulty with much less hash power.
Schwartz rejects Bitcoin Knots’ attack framing
Bitcoin Knots argued in its warning that Bitcoin was being attacked and urged users not to downgrade or switch software. Another post warned that doing so could expose users to false confirmations from blocks that Knots considers invalid under its rules.
Schwartz challenged that description rather than the broader debate over whether BIP-110’s data restrictions were desirable. His criticism comes as the official BIP record has already moved the proposal to Closed status. The BIP process itself states that publication does not establish community consensus and that no formal body decides which proposals Bitcoin users ultimately adopt.
Bitcoin Knots now plans a proof-of-work decision
The disagreement is not finished. Bitcoin Knots said in another post that a new proof-of-work algorithm would be selected at 14:00 UTC on Aug. 11 through a deterministic random process in its Discord strategy channel. At the time of publication, that scheduled selection had not yet occurred.
Such a change would represent a different path from continuing the stalled branch under Bitcoin’s existing SHA-256 mining system. No new algorithm had been publicly selected, and the existing BIP-110 specification remained marked Closed. In related governance coverage, the possibility of changing proof of work was identified as the next major test for whether the minority chain becomes a lasting separate network.
Dashjr loses BIP editor access amid fallout
The BIP-110 dispute has also produced a governance change outside the chain split. GitHub records show Jon Atack merged a request on Aug. 10 removing Luke Dashjr from the list of BIP editors after Mark Erhardt raised concerns over Dashjr’s involvement in BIP-110 and his use of editorial privileges.
Atack said Dashjr no longer held editor or administrator privileges in the repository before the list was updated. As crypto.news reported in editor removal coverage, Dashjr disputed the action and called it an abuse of power.
The immediate development to watch is Bitcoin Knots’ scheduled proof-of-work selection. Until a new algorithm is chosen and implemented, OCEAN data continues to show the BIP-110 branch at block 961,633, while the proposal itself remains officially Closed.
