Bitcoin's BIP-110 soft-fork attempt has stalled after producing only two blocks, leaving the new branch without sufficient hashpower to compete with the established Bitcoin chain.

Mandatory signaling began at block 961,632, but miners enforcing BIP-110 produced only blocks 961,632 and 961,633 before the branch ceased advancing. Under Bitcoin's longest-chain rule, the network recognizes the chain with the most accumulated proof of work as canonical. The main Bitcoin chain continued to accumulate substantially more proof of work, making the two-block branch effectively orphaned.

The split followed months of disagreement over whether Bitcoin's consensus rules should restrict transactions used to store arbitrary data. The change-chains proposal had been a subject of debate well before activation.

BIP-110 Fails to Attract Mining Support

BIP-110 introduces temporary consensus restrictions targeting large data payloads while preserving existing UTXOs created before activation. The rules restrict most new scriptPubKeys to 34 bytes, restore an 83-byte OP_RETURN limit, and restrict several witness and Taproot structures used for larger data storage. The soft fork is designed to expire after one year.

Supporters framed the change as an effort to keep Bitcoin focused on monetary transactions and reduce pressure from inscriptions and other non-payment data. The dispute had already raised the possibility of a chain split before the August activation window.

That risk materialized once enforcing nodes began rejecting blocks that did not signal for the new rules. Almost all mining power remained on the existing chain, leaving BIP-110 with a small minority branch.

Nodes that followed the two-block fork can now return to the higher-work Bitcoin chain by disabling the temporary consensus rules and resynchronizing.

Saylor Calls Outcome Bitcoin Working as Designed

Michael Saylor called the result a demonstration of Bitcoin's existing consensus model, estimating that roughly 99.85% of network hashpower stayed with the established chain.

He had opposed BIP-110 before activation, arguing that a disputed block-space policy should not become a consensus rule without broad alignment between miners, nodes, and economic participants.

The outcome follows the wider BIP-110 fight over OP_RETURN, inscriptions, and Bitcoin block space, which divided users over whether arbitrary-data activity should be restricted at the consensus layer or left to transaction policy and fee markets. The debate echoes earlier tensions in Bitcoin's history, including the 2015–2017 block-size disputes, where contested consensus changes similarly tested the network's governance model.

Non-payment activity has remained substantial even during that debate, with Runes and Alkanes helping push microtransactions toward 80% of Bitcoin transactions earlier this summer.

Dathon Ohm Floats Proof-of-Work Change

BIP-110 author Dathon Ohm rejected the mining outcome and accused large pools of colluding against the fork. He also raised the possibility of replacing Bitcoin's current proof-of-work algorithm within a future version of the BIP-110 branch, which would prevent existing SHA-256 mining infrastructure from determining its chain. Such a move would mark a fundamental departure from Bitcoin's original mining design, as SHA-256 application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) have dominated production mining hardware since 2013 and represent billions in deployed capital across the industry.

No proof-of-work replacement has been activated or broadly adopted.

The current BIP-110 branch remains stopped at block 961,633, while the established Bitcoin chain continues with the overwhelming majority of accumulated proof of work.