Bitcoin Advances BIP-54 Soft Fork to Fix Four Consensus Rule Vulnerabilities

Bitcoin is advancing a soft fork known as BIP-54, aimed at fixing four consensus rule vulnerabilities that have existed since the protocol's launch in 2009. These include time-warp attacks, long-verification toxic blocks, a 64-byte transaction vulnerability in the Merkle tree, and replay risks from duplicate coinbase transactions. BIP-54 was first drafted by developer Matt Corallo in March 2019 and officially received its BIP number in April 2025. Test vectors were merged by the end of 2025, and testing began in February 2026 on the Bitcoin Inquisition Signet network. MARA Pool and ViaBTC have already produced coinbase transactions compatible with BIP-54 on the mainnet. Corallo estimates that the probability of BIP-54 becoming the next soft fork after Taproot is about 80%. Paul Sztorc from LayerTwo Labs criticized the proposal as merely housekeeping, lacking new features. BIP-54 will not change Bitcoin's economic model, supply schedule, or token structure, but it can reduce the attack surface of the network.

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