Crypto
All that Went Wrong With Bitcoin’s BIP-110 Fork
Bitcoin’s BIP-110 soft fork has stalled after mining just two blocks, with only 2.53% miner support as the main Bitcoin network continues normally.
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BLOCKINSIDERLoadingBitcoin’s BIP-110 soft fork has stalled after mining just two blocks, with only 2.53% miner support as the main Bitcoin network continues normally.
Bitcoin’s controversial BIP-110 soft fork has failed to gain enough support after its minority chain split from the main network at block 961,632. The chain had only about 2.53% miner support and managed to produce just two blocks, leaving it far behind Bitcoin’s main chain within hours.
The split began on August 8, 2026, when Bitcoin nodes running BIP-110 software started rejecting blocks that did not support the proposal.
The first major break came after AntPool mined a non-signaling block. Bitcoin’s main network accepted the block, but BIP-110 nodes rejected it and moved onto a separate chain.
The result was an immediate gap between the two networks.
About eight hours after the split, the BIP-110 chain was around block 961,633, while the main Bitcoin network had already reached block 961,681. That left the minority chain nearly 50 blocks behind.
Since Bitcoin normally produces a block about every 10 minutes, the gap quickly became a major problem for the new chain.
The main issue was a lack of mining power. BIP-110 needed 55% miner support to activate, but it received only around 2.53%. Most miners continued supporting the original Bitcoin network.
The minority chain also inherited Bitcoin’s full mining difficulty of about 127.48 trillion. But with only a tiny share of the computing power, it had very little chance of producing blocks at the same speed as Bitcoin.
Bitcoin changes its mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks to keep block times close to 10 minutes.
That rule created another problem for BIP-110. The new chain first needs to mine 2,016 blocks before it can adjust its difficulty. Based on its current mining power, the next adjustment could be around 350 days away, compared with roughly 14 days for the main Bitcoin network.
In simple terms, the chain is trying to solve the same mining puzzle as Bitcoin with far fewer miners.
BIP-110, also known as the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork, was designed to limit the use of Bitcoin for storing non-financial data for one year. That includes images, text and Ordinals style inscriptions.
Supporters, including Bitcoin Knots creator Luke Dashjr, argue that this type of activity takes up valuable block space and can increase fees for people using Bitcoin for payments.
Opponents take a different view. They argue that users who pay the required transaction fee should be free to use Bitcoin's block space as they choose.
That disagreement over how Bitcoin's limited block space should be used is at the center of the BIP-110 fight.
Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor welcomed the failure of the minority chain. Saylor said Bitcoin worked exactly as designed because BIP-110 supporters were free to create their own chain, while the rest of the network was free not to follow it.
He argued that BIP-110 would “stall or fork into irrelevance while Bitcoin continues normally.”
Saylor also pointed out that about 99.85% of Bitcoin's hashpower remained with the main network. The main Bitcoin chain itself continued operating normally, with no major disruption from the split.
The failure does not mean the debate over Bitcoin's block space is over. BIP-110 supporters are already discussing another option, that is changing Bitcoin's proof-of-work algorithm.
However, that would move the project away from Bitcoin's current SHA-256 mining system and make traditional Bitcoin mining machines unusable on the new chain.
Such a move would effectively create a separate cryptocurrency, rather than simply maintaining a small Bitcoin fork.
For now, however, BIP-110 has little network activity and almost no mining support. Its two-block run shows that changing Bitcoin's rules requires more than new software.
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