Bitcoin’s controversial BIP-110 fork has fallen approximately 339 blocks behind the main Bitcoin blockchain, after the breakaway network managed to mine only two blocks before effectively grinding to a halt.
The enormous gap is the clearest indication yet that BIP-110’s attempt to impose new restrictions on data-heavy Bitcoin transactions has failed to attract meaningful mining support. The split began at Bitcoin block 961,632, when nodes enforcing BIP-110 started rejecting blocks that did not signal support for the proposal. The minority chain subsequently produced blocks 961,632 and 961,633, but has remained stalled while Bitcoin’s main chain continued advancing at roughly its normal 10-minute block interval.
The problem is mathematical as much as political. The BIP-110 chain inherited Bitcoin’s existing mining difficulty but attracted only a tiny fraction of Bitcoin’s computational power. Estimates following the split indicated approximately 99.85% of Bitcoin’s hashpower remained on the main network.
Without enough miners to solve blocks at the inherited difficulty, the minority chain became practically incapable of advancing.
BIP-110 Received Just 2.53% Miner Support
The collapse followed months of debate over what types of data should be permitted on Bitcoin.
BIP-110, formally called the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork, proposed approximately one year of additional consensus restrictions intended to limit methods used to place arbitrary non-financial data on Bitcoin.
Supporters argued that inscriptions, images, tokens and other data-heavy transactions consume scarce blockchain space and increase the long-term storage burden on Bitcoin node operators.
Opponents countered that Bitcoin should remain neutral toward any transaction satisfying its consensus rules and paying the required transaction fee.
That disagreement ultimately reached miners. BIP-110 established a 55% signaling threshold for voluntary activation. When its mandatory signaling phase arrived, however, only 51 of the preceding 2,016 blocks had signaled support, equivalent to approximately 2.53%.
Nodes enforcing the proposal nevertheless proceeded with the user-activated soft-fork rules and rejected the non-signaling Bitcoin chain. The result was not widespread Bitcoin adoption of BIP-110. Instead, it created a tiny minority blockchain with almost no mining power.
The fork initially produced two blocks over roughly eight hours. Bitcoin continued producing dozens of blocks over the same period and has subsequently moved hundreds of blocks ahead.
Full Bitcoin Difficulty Became a Death Trap
The BIP-110 chain’s biggest technical problem is that mining difficulty does not immediately adjust when hashpower disappears. Bitcoin recalculates mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks. Because the BIP-110 chain inherited the difficulty of the main network but only a fraction of its computational power, reaching another difficulty adjustment under the existing rules could take an extraordinary amount of time.
Early estimates suggested the minority chain’s next adjustment could be roughly 350 days away if its tiny share of hashpower remained unchanged.
That creates a self-reinforcing problem. Miners have little economic incentive to devote expensive computing power to a blockchain producing blocks extremely slowly, with no established exchange market and uncertain value for its coins. But without additional miners, the chain cannot produce enough blocks to lower its difficulty.
The result is the widening gap now measured in hundreds of blocks. The fork’s supporters are already discussing a more radical solution: abandoning Bitcoin’s existing proof-of-work environment entirely.
BIP-110’s pseudonymous author, Dathon Ohm, and other supporters have discussed changing the minority chain’s proof-of-work algorithm, which would allow it to reset its mining economics and operate independently of Bitcoin’s SHA-256 mining ecosystem.
September 1 has been discussed as a potential target for such a change.
If implemented, that would fundamentally change the nature of the project. What began as a proposed soft fork intended to change Bitcoin’s consensus rules would instead become a separate cryptocurrency with its own proof-of-work system.
No major cryptocurrency exchange has announced support for such a BIP-110 asset.
The episode has also triggered wider fallout within Bitcoin development. Veteran developer Luke Dashjr, one of BIP-110’s most prominent supporters, was removed from the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal editorial team following a dispute over his handling of the proposal.
BIP-110 has subsequently been marked Closed in the BIP repository. The fork nevertheless provides a striking example of how Bitcoin consensus works in practice. Running software that enforces different consensus rules is enough to create a separate blockchain, but it cannot force miners, exchanges, businesses or other users to assign that blockchain economic value.
BIP-110’s supporters were free to reject Bitcoin’s existing chain. Bitcoin’s miners were equally free not to follow them.
With only 2.53% signaling support, two blocks mined and the breakaway network now roughly 339 blocks behind Bitcoin, the market’s response has so far been overwhelming.
Unless BIP-110 attracts substantial new hashpower or abandons Bitcoin’s proof-of-work algorithm, the widening block gap is likely to become less a competition between two Bitcoin chains than a historical record of a fork that failed almost immediately after it began.