In brief
- Supporters of BIP-110 split off into a minority Bitcoin chain on Saturday at block 961,632, but it mined only two blocks in about eight hours before stalling, falling dozens of blocks behind the main network.
- The fork inherited Bitcoin’s difficulty setting with barely any hashpower—about 2.53% of recent blocks signaled support, far below the 55% activation threshold,
- BIP-110 sought to temporarily block non-financial data like Ordinals inscriptions from transactions, a move critics including Michael Saylor call a dangerous precedent.
The long-simmering fight over a controversial Bitcoin network proposal finally produced a chain split over the weekend, but the breakaway Bitcoin fork sputtered almost immediately, grinding out just two blocks in roughly eight hours before stalling out.
The fork came as a result of a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal known as BIP-110, whose supporters claimed would protect the network from unwanted spam and the legal liability that comes from hosting non-financial data on the network. Its detractors, the majority of the Bitcoin community, viewed it as an attempt at censorship.
The fork triggered 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 that signal was accepted by the main network and rejected by BIP-110 nodes, while a miner on the Ocean pool produced the alternative the minority chain followed.
Hours later, the splinter chain sat far behind, trailing the main network by dozens of blocks as Bitcoin kept churning out one roughly every ten minutes.
The stall stems from a problem the fork can’t easily escape. Bitcoin only recalibrates its mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks, and the breakaway chain inherited the network’s current setting while commanding a sliver of its computing power—about 2.53% of recent blocks signaled for the proposal, far short of the 55% needed to activate without splitting. At that pace, the chain would need roughly 350 days to reach its next difficulty adjustment, versus about two weeks for Bitcoin, leaving blocks hours apart.
BIP-110, as Decrypt has previously reported, is a soft-fork proposal to temporarily bar people from stuffing images, text, and other non-financial data into Bitcoin transactions. Backers argue the practice, popularized by Ordinals inscriptions, clogs the network and drives up fees for ordinary payments.
Opponents counter that anyone paying for block space has earned the right to use it as they see fit, and that letting miners and node operators police transactions erodes Bitcoin’s censorship resistance. Strategy’s Michael Saylor has been among the 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 hash power stayed with Bitcoin. The BIP-110 branch mined only two blocks and is already more than 80 blocks behind.”
Jameson Lopp, a long-time Bitcoin advocate and the co-founder of Bitcoin security company Casa, echoed the sentiment and took it a step further: I won’t be ‘welcoming back’ or unblocking any BIP-110 supporters,” he posted on X. “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.”
There’s a further catch for anyone holding the fork’s coins: because both chains accept identical transactions, a sale on the minority chain can be replayed on Bitcoin, potentially handing a buyer real BTC from the same seller. The mandatory signaling window closes at block 963,647—a mark the chain won’t come close to reaching.
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