Bitcoin BIP-110 fork stalls after mining only two blocks

The controversial Bitcoin BIP-110 soft-fork proposal, which aimed to temporarily restrict non-financial data like Ordinals from transactions, triggered a chain split at block 961,632 on August 8, 2026. However, the breakaway chain stalled after mining only two blocks. Inheriting Bitcoin's high difficulty setting with just 2.53% of the network's hashpower, the fork faces block times of several hours and a 350-day wait for a difficulty adjustment. Prominent figures like Michael Saylor declared the fork a failure, while proponent Luke Dashjr remains defiant.

BIP-110 fork stalls immediately

• ▪The first non-signaling block at height 961,632 was mined by AntPool and accepted by the main network, while the BIP-110 branch followed an alternative block produced by a miner on the Ocean pool
• ▪The Bitcoin BIP-110-enforcing branch stalled at block 961,633 on August 9, 2026, after producing only two blocks following a chain split
• ▪The BIP-110 chain split occurred at block 961,632 on August 8, 2026, when BIP-110 nodes began rejecting blocks that did not signal support

Mining difficulty inheritance problem

• ▪Because Bitcoin only recalibrates mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks, the BIP-110 branch would need approximately 350 days to reach its next difficulty adjustment at its current mining pace
• ▪The BIP-110 branch inherited Bitcoin's high mining difficulty setting but commanded only about 2.53% of the network's hashpower

Insufficient hashpower support

• ▪Only 51 of the 2,016 blocks preceding the split, or 2.53%, signaled support for BIP-110, far below the 55% threshold required to activate the proposal without a split
• ▪The BIP-110 mandatory signaling window runs through block 963,647, requiring 1,109 signaling blocks out of 2,016 to lock in

Non-financial data restrictions debate

• ▪BIP-110 is a soft-fork proposal authored under the pseudonym Dathon Ohm that seeks to temporarily restrict non-financial data, such as Ordinals inscriptions, from being stored in Bitcoin transactions
• ▪In 2025, Bitcoin Core 30 moved to increase the default OP_RETURN limit from 83 bytes to 100,000 bytes, which developers argued showed that restrictive data policies are ineffective
• ▪BIP-110 proponent Luke Dashjr rejected claims of the proposal's failure, stating that slower block times on the enforcing chain are tolerable

Community opposition to censorship

• ▪Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and Blockstream CEO Adam Back criticized BIP-110, warning that consensus-level changes over spam set a dangerous precedent and threaten Bitcoin's neutrality
• ▪Opponents of BIP-110 argue that restricting transaction content erodes Bitcoin's censorship resistance and that paying transaction fees entitles users to use block space as they wish

Chain split user risks

• ▪Because both chains accept identical transactions, users attempting to sell BIP-110 fork coins face replay-style risks where a buyer can rebroadcast the transaction to claim real Bitcoin on the main network
• ▪Official status feeds from major cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Kraken reported normal operations for their Bitcoin-related systems during the chain split