A minority chain created by supporters of Bitcoin's BIP-110 proposal has effectively ground to a halt, producing only two blocks in roughly eight hours while the main bitcoin chain has advanced by 48 blocks over the same period.

What BIP-110 Proposes

BIP-110, short for Bitcoin Improvement Proposal-110, seeks to temporarily ban the storage of non-financial data — such as images and text — inside bitcoin transactions for a period of one year. The proposal emerged in response to protocols like Ordinals, which since launching in January 2023 has enabled users to inscribe images, text, and other data onto individual satoshis, and BRC-20 tokens, which leverage similar inscription techniques to create fungible token contracts on Bitcoin. At peak periods, these transactions have occupied a significant share of block space and contributed to elevated fees. Supporters of the ban argue the practice clogs the network with material unrelated to payments and drives up costs for users sending money. Critics counter that anyone paying a transaction fee has purchased the right to use block space as they see fit, and that miners and node operators should not dictate which transactions are considered legitimate — a debate that echoes earlier Bitcoin governance conflicts over block size and the network's core purpose as a payment system.

The Fork and Its Immediate Aftermath

The fork occurred at block 961,632 on Saturday, when computers running BIP-110 software began rejecting any block that did not signal support for the proposal. Around 6 a.m. UTC, the breakaway chain sat at block 961,633 while the main bitcoin chain had reached block 961,681, according to the BIP-110 situation monitor. Since a block represents a batch of transactions added to bitcoin's ledger roughly every ten minutes, the gap of 48 blocks represents nearly a full day's worth of activity on the main chain and almost none on the fork.

Bitcoin mining firm AntPool mined the first non-signaling block, which the broader network accepted but BIP-110 nodes rejected. A miner using Ocean then produced the alternative block that the breakaway chain followed. AntPool and Ocean are both mining pools — operations where many participants combine their computing resources and share the rewards.

Why the Chain Stalled

The stall stems from a mechanical constraint that is difficult to overcome. Bitcoin recalculates its mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks, aiming to keep new blocks arriving approximately every ten minutes. The breakaway chain inherited bitcoin's current difficulty setting but commands only a tiny fraction of total hashpower, causing its blocks to arrive at extremely long intervals. It cannot adjust mining difficulty until it completes 2,016 blocks at the current pace — a milestone the monitor estimates is roughly 350 days away, compared with 14 days for the main bitcoin chain.

Support for BIP-110 was never sufficient. Only 2.53% of blocks signaled for the proposal over the past two weeks, far below the 55% threshold needed to activate it without a chain split.

Risks for Users

The fork coin occupies an awkward position for anyone attempting to sell it. Both chains still accept identical transactions, meaning a signed transaction sending fork coins also functions on the main bitcoin network. A buyer could rebroadcast that transaction on the main chain and collect real BTC from the same seller — exposing users to a replay-style attack vector. At the same time, a chain producing one block every several hours is slow to confirm any transaction, further complicating trades rather than facilitating them.

The two-week window during which BIP-110 nodes require every block to signal support runs through block 963,647. At the pace observed over the past day, the breakaway chain will not come close to reaching that target.

CoinDesk previously reported that BIP-110 entered its mandatory signaling period with under 3% miner support, and a developer warned that bitcoin holders risk losing real BTC if they sell coins from the BIP-110 fork.

Source: CoinDesk