BTC BIP-110 fork chain stalls amid boycott

TLDR

A minority Bitcoin (BTC) fork enforcing BIP-110 has effectively frozen after just two blocks as miners largely boycott the proposal.

1. BIP-110 created a split at block 961,632, but the enforcing chain has stalled after two blocks while the main Bitcoin chain continues normally.
2. The fork inherited full Bitcoin difficulty with only a tiny share of hashpower, so blocks would take many hours or years, making activation of BIP-110 practically impossible.
3. For BTC users, the main risk is theoretical replay and governance fallout, not immediate price impact, unless supporters escalate to a new proof-of-work or exchanges start treating the fork as a distinct asset.

Deep Dive

1. Fork And Boycott

BIP-110 is a Reduced Data Temporary Softfork that would block most non-financial data in Bitcoin transactions, targeting things like Ordinals inscriptions and large arbitrary payloads. When its mandatory signaling window began, nodes running BIP-110 started rejecting blocks that did not signal support via version bit 4, causing a chain split at block 961,632.

On the enforcing side, the Roughnecks mining group produced the only two blocks for the minority chain, then publicly quit BIP-110 mining and urged others to stop, while Ocean pools hashpower collapsed by over 90 percent. That effectively turned the fork into a stalled side chain with no sustained miner backing.

Major pools like Antpool, Foundry and F2Pool continued extending the non-enforcing chain without signaling, which is why many reports describe this as a silent miner boycott of BIP-110 rather than a live, contested fork.

2. Why The Chain Stalled

Both chains share the same proof-of-work rules and difficulty, but the enforcing branch has only a sliver of Bitcoins computing power. Across the prior difficulty period, about 2.5 percent of blocks signaled for BIP-110, far below the 55 percent threshold it needs to lock in.

Because difficulty only adjusts every 2,016 blocks, the minority chain is stuck with full Bitcoin difficulty while commanding near-zero hashpower. That combination means blocks arrive hours apart at best, and some estimates suggest it could take many years to reach the next difficulty adjustment if hashpower stays this low.

This is why the enforcing chain sits frozen around block 961,633, over 100 blocks behind the main network, with no realistic path to catching up or activating BIP-110 under the current design.

3. Impact, Risks And What To Watch

For ordinary BTC holders and users, the primary chain with almost all hashpower, infrastructure and economic activity continues as normal. So far, reports suggest minimal direct price impact and no disruption to exchanges or wallets using the dominant chain.

The main technical risk is replay style exposure for coins that existed before the split, since the minority fork did not add native replay protection. In practice, that risk only matters if the BIP-110 chain gains economic value and infrastructure, which has not happened.

Politically, this episode is a governance signal. It shows that user-activated soft forks which attempt to restrict data use on Bitcoin can stall if miners and much of the community view them as censorship or reject the process. The remaining wild card is whether BIP-110 supporters push a nuclear option such as switching to a different proof-of-work algorithm to escape Bitcoins difficulty and hashpower constraints.

Conclusion

The BIP-110 chain stall illustrates that hashpower, not node counts or rhetoric, ultimately decides which Bitcoin rules survive. With miners almost unanimously extending the non-enforcing chain, BIP-110 is functionally sidelined.

Unless supporters radically change strategy by altering proof-of-work or attracting significant new hashpower and exchange support, the fork is likely to remain a technical footnote and a warning about attempting contentious rule changes with limited consensus.