A minority Bitcoin chain created by BIP-110 supporters produced only two blocks in about eight hours after splitting from the main network. The stalled fork highlights the practical difficulty of pushing a contested rule change with limited miner support.
A minority Bitcoin chain created by BIP-110 supporters produced only two blocks in about eight hours after splitting from the main network. The stalled fork highlights the practical difficulty of pushing a contested rule change with limited miner support.
The episode matters because it shows how hard it is for a minority group to force a rule change on Bitcoin without broad mining support. By around 6 a.m. UTC, the forked chain was at block 961,633 while the main chain had reached block 961,681, leaving a 48-block gap between the two networks.
A breakaway Bitcoin chain tied to the controversial BIP-110 proposal effectively stalled after mining just two blocks in roughly eight hours. The split began at block 961,632, when nodes running BIP-110 software rejected blocks that did not signal support for the proposal, while the main Bitcoin chain continued advancing normally.
The episode matters because it shows how hard it is for a minority group to force a rule change on Bitcoin without broad mining support. By around 6 a.m. UTC, the forked chain was at block 961,633 while the main chain had reached block 961,681, leaving a 48-block gap between the two networks.
BIP-110 would temporarily block the storage of non-financial data, such as images and text, inside Bitcoin transactions for one year. Supporters argue that this kind of data can congest the network and raise costs for payment users, while opponents say anyone who pays transaction fees should be free to use block space as they choose.
The fork’s slowdown stems from Bitcoin’s difficulty system. The new chain inherited Bitcoin’s existing mining difficulty but had only a small share of the network’s computing power, meaning blocks arrived far more slowly than the roughly 10-minute cadence expected on Bitcoin. The source’s monitor estimated the forked chain would need about 350 days to reach its next difficulty adjustment, compared with about 14 days for Bitcoin.
Miner support was also limited. Only 2.53% of recent blocks had signaled for BIP-110, well short of the 55% threshold needed for activation without a split. CoinDesk also noted a replay-style risk because both chains still accepted identical transactions, potentially exposing users who attempted to sell fork coins while also spending their main-chain bitcoin.
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