Bitcoin's BIP-110 Fork Stalls at Two Blocks, 326 Behind Main Network and Six Years From Difficulty Reset

A proposed Bitcoin rule change known as BIP-110 triggered a chain split on Saturday, but the breakaway chain has produced only two blocks and has since stalled. Bitcoin's main network has produced more than 300 blocks over the same period.

Because the forked chain inherited Bitcoin's high mining difficulty while its coin carries no market value, miners have little incentive to support it. The chain is now 326 blocks behind the main network and cannot lower its mining difficulty until it reaches 2,016 blocks — a milestone currently estimated to be more than six years away. Some observers caution, however, that it is too early to declare the effort a failure.

The Split

The chain that broke away from Bitcoin on Saturday has not advanced since producing its second block at height 961,633. Bitcoin has since climbed to block 961,959, leaving the fork 326 blocks behind. A live monitor tracks the fork's progress.

The split was triggered by BIP-110, a proposal that would prohibit storing pictures, text, and other non-payment data in Bitcoin transactions for a period of one year. The practice of embedding data on Bitcoin's blockchain gained significant traction after the launch of the Ordinals protocol in January 2023, which allowed users to inscribe images, text, and other content onto individual satoshis — Bitcoin's smallest unit. The resulting surge in non-financial transactions sparked an ongoing debate within the Bitcoin community over whether the network should remain a dedicated monetary system or also serve as a broader data layer.

Changing Bitcoin's rules requires miners to signal agreement by marking the blocks they produce. BIP-110 needed 55% of blocks over a two-week window to activate; it reached approximately 2.6% at its peak.

The proposal included a second activation mechanism. At block 961,632, computers running BIP-110-compatible software began rejecting every block that did not carry the signaling mark, regardless of the overall level of miner support. Since almost no blocks carried the mark, those nodes rejected the chain that nearly all of Bitcoin's mining power was building and began following an alternative chain composed exclusively of blocks that did carry it.

Why Mining Stopped

Bitcoin's ledger is a chain of blocks, each a batch of transactions added by miners — firms operating warehouses of specialized computers that compete to produce the next block. Miners are compensated in newly issued bitcoin plus transaction fees, with a new block arriving approximately every ten minutes.

That ten-minute pace is maintained through a network difficulty level, which determines how much computational work a miner must perform to produce a valid block. The network recalculates difficulty every 2,016 blocks — roughly two weeks at normal speed. If blocks arrive too quickly, difficulty increases; if too slowly, it decreases.

Two blocks were produced on the forked chain before it ground to a halt. Mining it costs the same as mining Bitcoin — both chains inherited identical difficulty at the time of the split — but pays in a coin that has no market, no exchange listing, and no buyers. The forked chain cannot reduce its difficulty without first completing 2,016 blocks at its current pace.

A live tracker now estimates that adjustment at 6.3 years away, up from 350 days on Sunday. The figure is calculated from recent block times, meaning every idle hour pushes the estimate further out. Bitcoin's next difficulty adjustment is due in 12 days.

Expert Reaction

"The BIP-110 experiment has effectively collapsed after producing only two blocks and falling behind the main chain," said Nick Ruck, director of LVRG Research. "This underscores that Bitcoin's security and progress remain firmly tied to the overwhelming majority of hashpower" — the combined computing power that miners direct at the network.

Contentious rule changes without broad backing from miners and the wider economy are "destined to stall as minority forks," Ruck said, "leaving the primary network uninterrupted and intact."

Bitcoin has experienced chain splits before, though most notable forks — such as the 2017 split that created Bitcoin Cash over disagreements about increasing block sizes — attracted meaningful miner and exchange support in their early stages. The BIP-110 fork's immediate stagnation stands in contrast, reflecting how the activation-without-consensus mechanism produced a chain with almost no economic or computational backing.

Not everyone views the situation as resolved, however.

"I think it is still too early to draw any firm conclusions from the initial block production," Himanshu Sahay, co-founder of Arch, told CoinDesk in a message. Changes to Bitcoin's rules depend on coordination across miners, developers, and the broader ecosystem, he said, and while the gap is worth watching, "I would be cautious about describing it as a failure at this stage."

Source: CoinDesk