Bitcoin BIP editors remove Dashjr after fork stalls at 2 blocks

Bitcoin BIP editors removed Luke Dashjr on Aug. 10 after the BIP-110 fork stalled at two blocks with 2.53% miner support. Mark "Murch" Erhardt, a Bitcoin Core developer and fellow BIP editor, filed the removal motion on the Bitcoin Development Mailing List on Aug. 9, alleging Dashjr bypassed standard editorial coordination while advancing the proposal.

GitHub records show Jon Atack merged pull request 2248 into the bitcoin/bips repository on Aug. 10, striking Dashjr's name from BIP 3. The governing document now lists five editors: Bryan Bishop, Atack, Erhardt, Olaoluwa Osuntokun and Ruben Somsen. BIP-110 entered its mandatory activation window at block 961,632 on Aug. 8 with only 51 of the preceding 2,016 blocks — 2.53% — expressing support. Nodes enforcing its rules rejected non-compliant blocks, producing a minority branch that Roughnecks mined to block 961,633 before it stalled. The proposal is now marked Closed in the repository.

The removal exposes a governance gap: BIP 3 describes editor duties but contains no removal procedure. Dashjr called the action "an abuse of power by Core" and announced a sabbatical from Ocean, the mining pool where he serves as chairman and chief technology officer. Bitcoin traded at $64,002 late Monday, down 1.9% over 24 hours, with neither the fork nor the removal moving the price.

Erhardt's allegations center on BIP-110 handling

Erhardt alleged Dashjr assigned BIP-110 a number publicly before mailing list discussion concluded and merged a related pull request within minutes of it opening. He also claimed Dashjr produced fewer than 1% of BIP Editor comments after additional editors joined in April 2024, when reforms ended his sole control over BIP numbering.

Dashjr rejected the allegations within an hour of Erhardt's post. "These are false accusations," he wrote, adding that he had consistently followed the BIP process. He argued Erhardt should instead lose his editor position.

Support for removal came from Bitcoin developer Matt Corallo and fellow editor Osuntokun, who seconded the motion. Jameson Lopp, co-founder of self-custody firm Casa, noted the absence of formal governance: "This isn't a democracy and I have no vote." Antoine Riard backed the outcome but objected to the speed, proposing a two-week response window for Dashjr.

Fork remains frozen as support drops to zero

The BIP-110 enforcement branch remains stuck at block 961,633, while Bitcoin's dominant chain has advanced 292 blocks ahead. The bip110monitor.com dashboard shows no block setting bit 4 since the current difficulty period opened at height 961,632. Ocean was the only pool backing BIP-110 in the final period before the split, and it has since returned its default stratum endpoint to non-BIP-110 work.

Dashjr remains lead maintainer of Bitcoin Knots, the node implementation that shipped the BIP-110 rules in its 20260508 builds. Monday's removal does not touch that role. The immediate question for contributors is whether BIP 3 will be amended to include an explicit removal procedure, after the dispute exposed uncertainty over who holds authority to make such decisions.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.