Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr, who backed the failed Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP)-110, has been removed from his position as an editor of such proposals for the development of the Bitcoin network.
The decision, voted on by other Bitcoin developers, was posted on the BIP Github Sunday. The BIP Github page, separate from Bitcoin Core’s repository, is where developers can make proposals to change Bitcoin.
Dashjr called the decision “an abuse of power by Core,” adding: “They have no authority to do so.”
The motion read: “Over the past several years, Luke has been at the center of many contentious disputes within the Bitcoin ecosystem, and this week a new forkcoin spun out of Bitcoin under his leadership.”
It added: “More specifically, Luke was heavily involved in the creation and implementation of BIP110, the proposal that led to the fork. During that process, he also exercised his authority as a BIP Editor inconsistently with the established editorial process unfairly favoring the proposal he was involved in.”
The post further added that Luke has otherwise made hardly any contributions to the day-to-day work of the BIP Editors and “exercised his editorial privileges in a manner that raises conflict-of-interest concerns.”
Dashjr is one of Bitcoin Core’s earliest contributors but clashed with the network’s main developers — and wider community — after he became one of the biggest supporters of (BIP)-110, a Bitcoin softfork aimed at reducing spam on the Bitcoin network.
The wider Bitcoin industry opposed the proposal and it failed spectacularly when attempting to change Bitcoin consensus rules during the weekend, picking up only a fraction of the mining power of the main Bitcoin network.
Dashjr on Monday wrote on X that he was taking a sabbatical as chairman and CTO from Ocean, a mining company that supported the fork, and would dedicate his efforts to “working on Bitcoin and open-source projects to support Bitcoin.”
The (BIP)-110 proposal failed to get consensus Saturday when the nodes that support the proposal broke away from the main network and produced a new, out of consensus blockchain that people had been warning about.
The new chain stalled after two blocks were mined by enthusiasts and has gone nowhere since Saturday as hashpower from miners has been dedicated to the main Bitcoin network.