Bitcoin chain split stalls as miners boycott

TLDR

Bitcoin has split into a dominant main chain and a minority BIP-110 fork, but the forked chain is effectively stalled due to very weak miner support.

1. Nodes enforcing BIP-110 created a minority chain at block 961,632 that has only two blocks and is dozens of blocks behind the main chain, which continues normally.
2. Major mining pools are largely refusing to signal BIP-110, keeping their hashpower on the non-enforcing chain and turning the fork into a stalled side branch.
3. The key watchpoints are miner signaling, any decision to change the forks proof-of-work, and guidance from exchanges and wallets on whether they will recognize fork coins at all.

Deep Dive

1. How The Split Happened

BIP-110 is a proposed one-year soft fork that would restrict certain non-financial data on Bitcoin (BTC), including Ordinals-style inscriptions, by tightening limits on how much arbitrary data can be embedded in transactions.

When BIP-110 entered its mandatory signaling window at block 961,632 on 89 Aug 2026, AntPool mined the main-chain block, while BIP-110-supporting miner Roughnecks (via Ocean) produced an alternative block at the same height, creating two competing chains at that point. Reports from Bitcoin.com and The Block confirm that the BIP-110 chain then produced only one more block (961,633) before stalling, while the main chain quickly pulled ahead by double-digit blocks.

By the latest snapshots, the BIP-110-enforcing branch is stuck at block 961,633, with its last block many hours old, while the dominant chain has advanced much further, with exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken reporting normal operations on the main chain.

2. Why Miners Are Boycotting

BIP-110 requires about 55% of blocks in a 2,016-block window to signal support via version bit 4 to lock in. In practice, signaling has been around 23% of blocks, far below the threshold, according to dashboards referenced by TradingViews coverage of the fork.

Large pools such as Foundry, AntPool, F2Pool, ViaBTC and others have continued mining non-signaling blocks on the main chain, and none of the first several dozen blocks in the window showed BIP-110 signaling on the dominant chain, as detailed by CryptoSlates analysis of the split. This amounts to a de facto boycott: miners are choosing not to enforce or signal the proposal, leaving the minority chain with too little hashpower to move at normal block times.

Prominent critics such as Michael Saylor and Blockstreams Adam Back have argued that changing consensus to restrict non-financial data could undermine neutrality or even make some outputs unspendable, while supporters like Oceans Luke Dashjr argue that large inscriptions burden nodes and compete with monetary transactions. The lack of miner backing shows where todays governance power sits.

3. Risks And What To Watch Next

Because the BIP-110 chain inherits Bitcoins current difficulty but has only a tiny fraction of hashpower, its blocks arrive extremely slowly. Analyses suggest that without a big hashrate shift, it could take many months for the minority chain to reach a difficulty adjustment, which makes it impractical as a live payment network or store of value.

Some BIP-110 advocates are already floating a nuclear option of changing the fork chains proof-of-work algorithm to escape this trap, according to multiple reports. That would effectively turn it into a separate asset with incompatible mining, similar in spirit to earlier contentious forks.

For most users and institutions, the dominant chain with the clear majority of hashpower and exchange support remains canonical. The main practical risks are confusion and potential double-spend issues for anyone accepting payments directly on the minority chain.

Conclusion

BIP-110 has triggered a visible governance stress test for Bitcoin, but the outcome so far is decisive: miners and economic infrastructure are staying with the non-enforcing chain, leaving the BIP-110 branch stalled.

Market impact appears limited for now, yet the episode underscores how hard it is to push through consensus-level changes that restrict how block space is used, and it highlights the continuing tension between neutrality, censorship resistance, and attempts to curate what goes on-chain.