BTC BIP-110 fork stalls after two blocks

TLDR

A minority Bitcoin (BTC) chain enforcing the BIP-110 soft fork has stalled after just two blocks, while nearly all hashpower stays on the main network.

1. The BIP-110 enforcing branch split at block 961,632, mined only two blocks, then stopped as the dominant Bitcoin chain pulled dozens of blocks ahead.
2. BIP-110 aims to temporarily restrict non-financial data like Ordinals, but miner signaling sits around 2.5 percent, leaving the fork with full difficulty and almost no hashpower.
3. The main Bitcoin chain continues normally; users mainly face replay and confusion risks if they touch the fork, while the episode highlights how hard it is to change Bitcoin without broad consensus.

Deep Dive

1. Fork Stalls Quickly

From block height 961,632, nodes running BIP-110 software began rejecting blocks that did not carry the required signaling bit, creating a separate enforcing chain. That chain has only produced two blocks, 961,632 and 961,633, before effectively stopping, while the main Bitcoin chain advanced dozens of blocks beyond 961,681, according to multiple reports.

Coverage from outlets like CoinDesk and CryptoSlate notes that the BIP-110 branch inherited Bitcoins full mining difficulty but has only about 2.5 percent recent hashpower, resulting in block intervals measured in hours, not minutes, and an increasing gap of tens of blocks behind the dominant chain. Social monitoring shows roughly 99.85 percent of hashpower staying on the main chain.

2. Why BIP-110 Failed

BIP-110 is a proposed one year soft fork that would restrict certain ways of embedding arbitrary, non-payment data in Bitcoin transactions, targeting things like Ordinals-style inscriptions and other blockspace spam. Proponents argue this keeps Bitcoin focused on money and lowers node operating costs; critics see it as censorship of paid block space.

Miner signaling for BIP-110 has been consistently tiny, around 2.5 percent of blocks, far below the 55 percent threshold the proposal set for activation, as documented in dashboards and articles like Cointelegraphs fork coverage. Major pools have continued mining the legacy rules, while exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken report normal operations on the dominant chain. Without substantial hashpower behind it, the enforcing branch cannot realistically progress to a difficulty adjustment, leaving it stuck at extremely slow block times.

3. Impact And What To Watch

For everyday Bitcoin users, the key point is that the main Bitcoin chain continues as usual with overwhelming hashpower and liquidity; the stalled BIP-110 branch is a thin, illiquid side chain. The bigger near term risks are technical and operational: several sources highlight that both chains currently accept identical transactions, so there is little replay protection, meaning a transaction broadcast on the fork could also be valid on the main chain and move real BTC.

Wallet and security commentators have warned users to avoid interacting with BIP-110 fork assets until explicit replay protections or clear tooling exist, and to keep nodes and wallets pointed at the canonical chain. Looking forward, the main things to watch are whether BIP-110 supporters abandon the fork, attempt a proof of work change to salvage it, or regroup for a different governance path, and how this debate affects future proposals about data usage on Bitcoin.

Conclusion

The BIP-110 enforcing fork shows how strongly Bitcoins economic majority can resist protocol changes that lack broad miner and node support. A tiny share of hashpower tried to enforce new data rules, mined two blocks, and stalled while the main chain surged ahead.

For BTC holders, the practical outcome is that the primary network remains intact, but the episode underlines both the replay and confusion risks of contentious forks and the high bar any future rule change must clear to gain real consensus.