Bitcoin Fork BIP 110 Stalls After Failing To Gain Miner Support

A group of nodes attempting to implement the BIP 110 soft fork broke away from the main Bitcoin network this past Saturday at block 961,632. The split happened when these nodes began rejecting blocks that did not signal support for the new protocol. Since that time, the forked chain has stalled completely after producing only two blocks.

The effort struggled from the start due to a lack of mining power. Only about 2.5 percent of blocks in the recent difficulty window signaled support for BIP 110, falling far short of the 55 percent threshold required for activation. Because the forked chain carries the same difficulty level as the main network but has almost no hashpower, it will likely remain frozen for a long time.

BIP 110 was designed to cap the amount of arbitrary data allowed in transactions, specifically targeting Ordinals inscriptions. Industry leaders, including Michael Saylor, spoke out against the activation method used for this proposal. They argued that the process was flawed and did not have the consensus required to succeed on the main network.

Some miners using templates from the mining pool Ocean were accidentally directed to the forked chain without realizing it. Ocean has promised to reimburse these users for the rewards they missed out on while mining on the dead end chain. For now, the dominant Bitcoin network continues to operate normally, leaving the BIP 110 project largely abandoned.