The breakaway Bitcoin chain created by the BIP-110 proposal is widely described as being roughly six years away from its first mining difficulty adjustment. That figure, however, accounts for only the initial reset. Because Bitcoin caps any single downward difficulty adjustment at a factor of four, the fork would actually require four consecutive resets to restore normal block production—pushing a realistic recovery timeline beyond eight years at current hashrate levels.

A Chain That Stalled on Day One

The BIP-110 chain has produced only two blocks in its entire existence. Both were mined on 8 August by a pseudonymous group calling itself Roughnecks, using Ocean's DATUM protocol. No further blocks have followed.

The main Bitcoin chain, by contrast, has continued uninterrupted. A direct query of the main chain tip at 14:00 UTC on 11 August returned block 961,992, placing the fork 359 blocks behind. CoinDesk had reported a gap of 326 earlier that morning, while Bitcoin Magazine counted 111 on 9 August. The deficit is widening by roughly one block every ten minutes, with none of that growth attributable to the fork.

The split was never close to contested. BIP-110—formally designated the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork—asked miners to signal support on version bit 4 and required 1,109 of 2,016 blocks (55 percent), according to the specification in the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals repository. Only 51 blocks signaled, amounting to 2.53 percent. Bitcoin Magazine reported that figure on 10 August. The version bits system, introduced via BIP-9 in 2015, was designed to let miners coordinate soft fork activation by setting bits in block headers; BIP-110 repurposes that signaling infrastructure but lowers the lock-in threshold well below the 90-to-95 percent range that prior successful soft forks have used.

What triggered the chain split despite the overwhelming rejection was the proposal's fallback mechanism. Its mandatory signaling window runs from block 961,632 to block 963,647. Within that window, nodes running BIP-110 reject any block that does not include the required signal. On 8 August, those nodes rejected the block the rest of the network had just produced and began building their own chain.

The Six-Year Estimate Is the Best Case

Both chains inherited identical mining difficulty at the point of separation, which lies at the core of the problem. Producing a BIP-110 block costs exactly the same in computational resources as producing a Bitcoin block, yet it pays in a coin that has no exchange listing, no market price, and no buyer. There is no economic incentive for anyone to mine it.

Difficulty only resets after a chain completes a full 2,016-block retarget period—an interval designed to span approximately two weeks on a normally functioning chain, recalibrating roughly every 2016 blocks to keep average block times near ten minutes. The fork has mined two blocks, leaving 2,014 remaining in the current period. A live monitor cited by CoinDesk placed that milestone 6.3 years away as of 11 August—a sharp increase from an estimate of 350 days just two days earlier.

Working backward from the 6.3-year estimate reveals the underlying assumption: spreading 2,014 blocks across that span implies roughly one block every 27 hours, which corresponds to approximately 0.6 percent of Bitcoin's total hashrate. That figure represents roughly a quarter of the 2.53 percent that originally signaled support for the proposal.

Why Difficulty Cannot Fall Fast Enough

Reaching the first difficulty reset would not restore normal block production. Bitcoin limits how far difficulty can move in a single adjustment to a factor of four in either direction. This consensus rule has existed since the protocol's inception and is designed specifically to prevent wild oscillations following a hashrate shock.

A chain operating on 0.6 percent of Bitcoin's hashpower requires difficulty to drop by a factor of approximately 165 before blocks would arrive at the standard ten-minute interval. At the maximum reduction of four times per adjustment period, the fork needs four consecutive 2,016-block retarget windows to reach that level—and it must mine every block in each one of them.

The first period is the most punishing, estimated at 6.3 years. After the initial reduction, blocks would arrive roughly every seven hours, making the second period approximately 1.6 years. The third period would take about five months, and the fourth roughly six weeks. In total, the chain would reach normal block times just past the eight-year mark—and only if the small number of miners currently on it never leave.

The Fork Cannot Reach Its Own Activation Height

The arithmetic creates a paradoxical outcome for the proposal itself. BIP-110 was written to guarantee activation: the specification locks in its rules at block 963,648 and switches them on at block 965,664—a height that corresponds to approximately 1 September 2026 on a normally functioning chain.

Those are block heights, not calendar dates. The enforcing chain currently sits at block 961,633, leaving it 2,015 blocks short of lock-in and 4,031 blocks short of the point where its restrictions would take binding effect. The rules the entire exercise was designed to impose cannot activate on the chain enforcing them until well into the 2030s.

Methodology

Block heights are drawn from the BIP-110 specification and a direct query of Bitcoin's tip height on 11 August. The estimated 0.61 percent hashrate share is derived by reversing the published 6.3-year estimate across the 2,014 blocks the chain still needs to produce, rather than from direct measurement, since the chain has generated no blocks from which to measure performance. The four-times limit on downward difficulty adjustments is a consensus rule, not an assumption. Every projection above holds only if hashrate remains at current levels; a single large mining pool redirecting power to the fork would shorten all timelines, while miners departing would extend them.

Critics and Defenders

Michael Saylor and Blockstream CEO Adam Back both objected to the proposal before the split, focusing their criticism on the activation method rather than the underlying goal. Strategy published a detailed critique arguing that lowering the threshold from the customary 95 percent to 55 percent set a dangerous precedent for contested changes, and that mandatory signaling fundamentally redefined what it means for a miner to abstain from a vote. Saylor stated on 9 August that Bitcoin had functioned as designed, with 99.85 percent of hashpower remaining on the main chain.

Nick Ruck, director of LVRG Research, told CoinDesk that the experiment "has effectively collapsed after producing only two blocks and falling behind the main chain," adding that contested rule changes lacking broad support are "destined to stall as minority forks."

That assessment is not unanimous. Himanshu Sahay, co-founder of Arch, told CoinDesk it is "still too early to draw any firm conclusions from the initial block production," noting that rule changes depend on coordination among miners, developers, and the broader ecosystem. He said he would "be cautious about describing it as a failure at this stage." Luke Dashjr, one of the proposal's backers, has described the slow block times as tolerable and urged Bitcoin Knots users to upgrade. A chain that has ceased producing blocks is not the same as a chain that has been formally abandoned.

Unintended Mining Redirects

The only parties financially affected so far are miners. Ocean, whose team supported the proposal, notified clients that some users of its Stratum templates may have believed they were mining Bitcoin while their hashrate was directed to the BIP-110 chain. The company stated it would reimburse affected miners for what they would have earned on the main chain during that period. Anyone who mined through Ocean templates on 8 and 9 August should verify which chain their shares were credited against rather than assuming their payouts were processed normally.

What to Watch

A third block on the fork would alter the picture more rapidly than any other development, since every figure in this analysis rests on a hashrate estimate that a single mining pool could overturn overnight. Absent that, the next milestone is 1 September 2026, when block 965,664 passes on the main chain and BIP-110's activation deadline effectively lapses while the enforcing chain remains thousands of blocks below it.

The final variable is whether any exchange lists the forked coin. Nothing in the arithmetic changes until mining becomes economically viable, and at present it generates no realizable revenue.