# Bitcoin Art in 2026: The Great “Spam” Panic, Our Future Inscriptions, and Why We Can Still Make More *The TLDR of BIP-110* By [N3W M0N3Y](https://paragraph.com/@n3w-m0n3y) · 2026-07-17 bitcoin, bip-110 --- Picture this: You’re an artist who finally took the plunge last year. You inscribed a delicate watercolor series onto Bitcoin — not because you wanted to “store data,” but because the permanence felt right. The sats are now little time capsules carrying your work. Or maybe you’re a collector who bought a few pieces from someone who did exactly that. You like knowing the art lives on the same chain as the hardest money ever invented. Then the headlines start rolling in again. **Another Bitcoin Improvement Proposal — this one called BIP-110 — is supposedly coming to “fix” the chain by limiting how much arbitrary stuff people can put on it. The usual suspects are calling inscriptions “spam.”** Other people are calling the proposal itself dangerous overreach. Twitter (sorry, X) is doing what it does best: turning a nuanced technical debate into a shouting match about the soul of Bitcoin. If you’re an artist who has already inscribed something, or someone thinking about doing it for the first time... ### Let’s get the most important part out of the way immediately. Your Existing Ordinals Are Safe. We Can Still Inscribe. ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/fb4530e79ab4559c801ccd7b1b7a8e28f65f66b3635dd75cda4d0ba2b7aa3c96.png) A Bitcoin-centric Ordinal by Maxximillian Pepavaggio. Want to see more? Visit the artist's web experience featuring more memetic and pepe art at [pepavaggio.art](http://pepavaggio.art) If you’ve already put art on Bitcoin, BIP-110 (even if it somehow activated) would not touch it. The proposal includes a permanent exemption for anything created before it goes live. Your inscriptions stay exactly where they are — immutable, viewable, transferable. The sats carrying your work can still be moved whenever you want. No deadline. No “move it or lose it.” This is the part that often gets lost in the noise. The drama is almost entirely about new inscriptions, not the ones already sitting there quietly doing their thing. What BIP-110 Actually Tries to Do (Without the Panic) ----------------------------------------------------- BIP-110 is [a temporary soft fork proposal](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/foundry-asks-bitcoin-miners-vote-bip-110) that would, for about a year, make it harder to stuff large amounts of data into new Bitcoin transactions the way many current inscriptions do. Think smaller data “pushes,” restrictions on certain Taproot patterns that big files like to use, and tighter limits on things like OP\_RETURN. The stated goal is to reduce what some people see as bloat and refocus the chain on being money. The satirical part? A proposal with roughly 1% miner support (as of mid-July 2026) is being treated in some corners like it’s already rewriting the rules of the universe. In reality, it’s struggling to get even basic signaling. Major mining pools have stayed away. Prominent voices have come out against turning a content dispute into a consensus fight. Bitcoin has always been stubborn about changes that lack broad agreement. That stubbornness is usually a feature, not a bug. For Artists Thinking About Inscribing Something New --------------------------------------------------- ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/67e62f24a5aa7a761fc4d0c89858e31cf008cdcec0a02de3ba881f78866ffdf3.png) Another banger degentified ordinal from Maxximillian Pepavaggio, inspired by a favorite childhood story and portrait photography nostalgia of a previous lifetime. Here’s where things get practical beyond the theoretical. If BIP-110 somehow squeaked through on the main chain (and the current numbers make that look unlikely), the classic “one giant file in one inscription” method would become more difficult for a while. But [the Ordinals community has already built workarounds](https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/07/17/bitcoin-s-anti-spam-fight-gets-a-dog-mode-reply) — splitting larger pieces into smaller compliant chunks and [using updated inscription formats](https://x.com/LeonidasNFT/status/2077961811710591386). Art on Bitcoin doesn’t have to disappear; it just might need to arrive in slightly different packaging. More importantly, most artists aren’t trying to inscribe 4-megabyte interactive experiences that fill entire blocks. Most of us are making normal-sized images, text pieces, small animations, or simple HTML experiments. Those would be far less affected even in a worst-case scenario. And the bigger picture? After the one-year period, the restrictions (if they ever exist) would automatically expire anyway. Where to Actually Inscribe Something Today (The Easy Way) --------------------------------------------------------- If you’re an artist who hasn’t inscribed yet, or you want to make more, the process in 2026 is genuinely approachable for normal-sized work. ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/a6bd93d8a337bae3db54a8820081332bb3301ef0006c125fec2e65309711efa3.png) Ordinals on gamma.io, Maxximillian's [GILFvison](https://gamma.io/ordinals/collections/gilfs/items) collection of glitch art featuring all women, debuted during Miami Art Week, exhibited at SLS South Beach. The friendliest option for most people right now is still [Gamma.io](http://Gamma.io). It’s basically the “I just want to put my art on Bitcoin without learning command-line sorcery” choice. You connect a wallet (Xverse or Unisat work great), drag and drop your file, pick a fee, and sign. It handles the technical commit-and-reveal dance behind the scenes. Unisat Wallet’s built-in inscriber is another excellent, very popular option — especially if you like having the tool inside the same browser extension you use for everything else. It even has batch options and occasional fee promotions. Magic Eden also has a clean inscription tool if you’re already hanging out in their ecosystem. None of these require you to run a full Bitcoin node. They’re non-custodial (you keep control of your keys), and they’re built for exactly the kind of art most creators actually make. Pro tip from people who’ve done this a few times: smaller files are dramatically cheaper. A well-optimized image or thoughtful piece of pixel art can cost very little in fees if it's inscribed at the right time (when fees are low). The Takeaway ------------ The endless debate about whether Bitcoin “should” allow art is starting to feel like two people arguing over whether a really good restaurant should only serve steak or whether it’s allowed to also have a nice dessert menu. Meanwhile, the restaurant keeps seating people who are happy to pay for whatever they order. Bitcoin’s fee market has already shown it can price data usage appropriately. When people want to inscribe things and are willing to pay the fees, miners include the transactions. When they don’t, they don’t. It’s not elegant philosophy — it’s just how the incentives work. For collectors and artists who aren’t trying to win the “biggest file on the chain” contest, the sky is not falling. Your existing pieces remain exactly as permanent as they were the day they were inscribed. And if you want to make new ones, the tools are simpler and more accessible than they’ve ever been. The real story isn’t whether some proposal with minimal support will temporarily inconvenience the maximalist data crowd. It’s that thousands of artists and collectors have already decided Bitcoin is interesting enough to put meaningful creative work on it — and they’re still doing it. Your watercolor series, your weird little pixel experiments, your carefully chosen text pieces… they’re not spam. They’re just another way people are choosing to use the most secure, decentralized database humanity has built so far. And right now, in the middle of all the BIP-110 drama, that still feels like a pretty interesting thing to do. ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/a0c69f8265bdb3637bd852127f115361345f0dc9fa4c1828928d85afdf673b7c.png) Cover and Art by Maxximillian See more from this artist at her online experience [Pepavaggio.art](http://Pepavaggio.art) ---> visit and subscribe! --- *Originally published on [N3W M0N3Y](https://paragraph.com/@n3w-m0n3y/bip-110-art-on-bitcoin-insriptions-bitcoin-news)*