Bitcoin BIP-110 Fork Stalls Hundreds of Blocks Behind Main Chain

A Bitcoin fork tied to the proposed BIP-110 rule change has stalled after producing just two blocks since splitting from the main network on Saturday. The breakaway chain remains at block 961,633, while Bitcoin has advanced to block 961,959, putting the fork 326 blocks behind.

The development matters because it shows how difficult it is for a rule-change effort to survive without broad miner coordination. BIP-110 sought to temporarily stop users from storing images, text and other non-payment data in Bitcoin transactions, but it only reached about 2.6% miner signaling at its peak, far short of the 55% threshold it needed over a two-week period.

Instead of ending there, BIP-110 included a fallback path. At block 961,632, nodes running the BIP-110 software began rejecting blocks that did not carry the proposal’s marker. Because almost all Bitcoin mining power continued building blocks without that marker, those nodes followed a separate chain supported by very little hash power.

The fork’s central problem is difficulty. Bitcoin adjusts mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks, usually about every two weeks, but the BIP-110 chain inherited Bitcoin’s existing difficulty when it split. Mining the fork therefore costs roughly the same as mining Bitcoin, while the forked coin has no market, exchange listing or buyers, leaving miners with little economic reason to produce blocks.

A live monitor cited by CoinDesk now estimates the fork’s next difficulty adjustment at 6.3 years away, up from 350 days on Sunday, with every idle hour pushing the estimate further out. Still, some observers are cautious about calling the effort finished: Himanshu Sahay, co-founder of Arch, told CoinDesk that early block production alone is not enough to draw firm conclusions and that Bitcoin rule changes depend on coordination across miners, developers and the wider ecosystem.