BTC BIP-110 fork stalls on minority chain

TLDR

Bitcoins BIP-110 soft fork split off into a minority chain that mined only two blocks before effectively stopping, while almost all hashpower stayed on the main Bitcoin network.

1. BIP-110s minority chain stalled after blocks 961632 and 961633, with roughly 99.85 percent of mining power remaining on the main Bitcoin chain.
2. The fork inherited Bitcoins very high mining difficulty but attracted only about 0.15 percent hashpower, making further blocks and a difficulty adjustment practically unreachable.
3. Backers are now discussing a proof-of-work change and even a breakaway coin, but for regular Bitcoin users the canonical chain, security, and price have remained stable.

Deep Dive

1. How The Fork Stalled

BIP-110 is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal that tried to temporarily restrict non-financial data in transactions, aiming to curb Ordinals and similar spam. It deployed as a soft fork that required 55 percent miner signaling.

When mandatory signaling kicked in at block 961632, nodes enforcing BIP-110 rejected non-signaling blocks and split into a minority chain. The Roughnecks pool mined only two blocks on that branch (961632 and 961633), after which no further blocks were produced, while the main chain continued advancing dozens, then hundreds of blocks ahead.BIP-110 stall

Reports estimate that around 99.85 percent of global Bitcoin hashpower remained on the original chain, leaving roughly 0.15 percent on the BIP-110 fork, which rapidly fell more than 80 blocks behind.Hashpower split

2. Why Hashpower Stayed With Bitcoin

Miner signaling for BIP-110 never exceeded about 2 to 2.6 percent during the deployment window, far below the 55 percent threshold.Soft fork implosion Most pools and individual miners concluded that enforcing the proposal was not worth the risk, and continued mining on the standard Bitcoin rules.

The minority branch inherited Bitcoins roughly 127.48 trillion difficulty but kept only a tiny fraction of SHA-256d hashpower.Difficulty mismatch At that level, estimates suggest it could take decades for the minority chain to mine 2,016 blocks and reach a difficulty adjustment, essentially freezing it.

Mining pool OCEAN even had to refund miners after a configuration error accidentally sent some hashpower to the stalled chain, underlining that most economic actors treat the main chain as canonical.OCEAN refunds

3. Next Steps And User Impact

BIP-110 supporters, including Luke Dashjr and Dathon Ohm, are now debating changing the proof-of-work algorithm on the minority chain to fire the miners by breaking away from SHA-256d ASIC hardware, with options like RandomX or Scrypt being discussed.PoW reset debate Separate reporting even floats September 1, 2026 as a target for a full breakaway coin with a new PoW.Breakaway coin idea

At the same time, Bitcoin developer governance is reacting: BIP editor Mark Murch Erhardt has moved to remove Dashjr as a BIP editor over conflict-of-interest concerns, with several contributors supporting that change.Governance dispute

For everyday Bitcoin users, the main chain continues unaffected, with price and ETF flows driven more by macro conditions than by this stalled fork.

Conclusion

The BIP-110 fork shows how difficult it is to push contentious changes when miners, exchanges, and users do not broadly agree. With almost all hashpower, liquidity, and infrastructure staying on the main chain, Bitcoins security and role as the canonical network remain intact, while the minority chain looks more like a governance and design experiment than a rival. Going forward, the key implications are in politics and protocol process, as debates over data usage and miner power continue rather than in immediate risk to BTC holdings.