Is Bitcoin on the Brink of Another Civil War?
The ongoing debate over the filtering of transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain has surfaced a growing divide within the BTC development community, echoing the ideological rifts of the 2015–2017 blocksize wars . At the core is a conflict between proponents of stricter filtering, aimed at curbing Ordinals, Inscriptions, and CoinJoin transactions, and advocates of a more open, permissionless protocol that treats all valid, fee-paying transactions equally. While critics warn that lifting so-called OP_RETURN restrictions could bloat the blockchain and deviate from Bitcoin’s monetary purpose, supporters argue that the existing filters are ineffective and represent a form of soft censorship that undermines decentralisation. With rising adoption of alternatives like Bitcoin Knots , and ongoing concerns over governance centralisation, the outcome of this debate may reshape how Bitcoin defines neutrality, policy enforcement, and its evolving role as the original and largest cryptocurrency.
