Supporters of the BIP-110 proposal split off into a minority Bitcoin chain on Saturday at block 961,632, but the breakaway fork managed to mine only two blocks in roughly eight hours before stalling, falling dozens of blocks behind the main network.

The fork inherited Bitcoin's difficulty setting while commanding barely any hashpower. Approximately 2.53% of recent blocks signaled support for BIP-110—far below the 55% activation threshold the proposal required. The outcome underscores Bitcoin's proof-of-work design, where hashpower majority ultimately determines which chain the market treats as canonical.

BIP-110 is a soft-fork proposal designed to temporarily bar users from embedding images, text, and other non-financial data into Bitcoin transactions—a practice popularized by Ordinals inscriptions. Since Ordinals launched in early 2023, the protocol has driven a surge in on-chain activity, generating substantial fee revenue for miners but also congesting the mempool during peak periods. Backers of BIP-110 argue that such data clogs the network and drives up fees for ordinary payments. Detractors, who represent the majority of the Bitcoin community, view the proposal as an attempt at censorship, countering that anyone paying for block space has the right to use it as they see fit. The dispute echoes earlier Bitcoin governance conflicts—notably the 2015–2017 block size debate—where competing visions of the network's purpose produced entrenched ideological camps and, ultimately, chain splits.

Chain Split and Immediate Stall

The fork triggered on Saturday at block 961,632, when Bitcoin nodes running BIP-110 software began rejecting any block that failed to signal support for the proposal. A block mined by AntPool without the required signal was accepted by the main network and rejected by BIP-110 nodes. Meanwhile, a miner on the Ocean pool produced the alternative block that the minority chain followed.

Hours later, the splinter chain sat far behind the main network, which continued producing blocks roughly every ten minutes.

The stall stems from a structural problem the fork cannot easily escape. Bitcoin recalibrates its mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks, and the breakaway chain inherited the network's current difficulty setting while commanding only a sliver of its computing power. At its current pace, the minority chain would need approximately 350 days to reach its next difficulty adjustment, compared to about two weeks for the main Bitcoin network—leaving blocks hours apart. This is the same dynamics that doomed prior minority Bitcoin forks such as Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin XT, which lost hashpower and effectively froze.

Prominent Critics Weigh In

Strategy's Michael Saylor has been among the most prominent critics, warning that turning a spam dispute into a consensus change sets a dangerous precedent.

On early Sunday morning, Saylor posted on X:

"Bitcoin worked exactly as designed. BIP-110 was free to fork, and the network was free not to follow. The result was decisive: about 99.85% of Bitcoin's hashpower stayed with Bitcoin. The BIP-110 branch mined only two blocks and is already more than 80 blocks behind."

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) August 9, 2026

Jameson Lopp, a long-time Bitcoin advocate and co-founder of Bitcoin security company Casa, echoed the sentiment and went further. Posting on X, he wrote:

"I won't be 'welcoming back' or unblocking any BIP-110 supporters. They proved themselves to be susceptible to delusional propaganda from folks emanating reality distortion fields. In many cases they spewed vitriol and harassed the very people who have devoted their lives to supporting and improving Bitcoin."

— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) August 9, 2026

Replay Risk and Closure

There is a further complication for anyone holding coins on the minority chain. Because both chains accept identical transactions, a sale on the fork's chain can be replayed on the main Bitcoin network, potentially handing a buyer real BTC from the same seller. Previous high-profile Bitcoin forks addressed this risk by implementing replay protection—Bitcoin Cash added it when splitting in August 2017—but the BIP-110 chain includes no such safeguard.

The mandatory signaling window for BIP-110 closes at block 963,647—a mark the minority chain will not come close to reaching.