Bitcoin BIP-110 Fork Chain All But Stalls After Two Blocks

A fork of the Bitcoin network that enforces the BIP-110 rule has all but stalled after producing just two blocks, and is rapidly falling further behind the main chain.

Cointelegraph reported on August 9 that the BIP-110 chain stopped progressing at block 961,633. By the same time, the chain that does not enforce BIP-110 had reached block 961,721, widening the gap to 88 blocks. The BIP-110 monitor showed the fork chain’s most recent block was mined about 12 hours earlier.

The fork chain’s first two blocks were mined by Roughnecks, an anonymous mining group, through Ocean’s decentralized mining protocol DATUM.

The split was triggered on August 8 at block 961,632, when mandatory signaling for BIP-110 began. In the previous 2,016-block period, 51 blocks signaled support for BIP-110, or 2.53% of the total. BIP-110 nodes reject blocks that do not signal through version bit 4, while standard Bitcoin nodes accept blocks regardless of signaling.

For the BIP-110 chain to get a difficulty adjustment, it must mine the entire current 2,016-block adjustment period through block 963,647. Unless more hashpower moves to the chain, its progress will remain slow.

Pushback from the Bitcoin community has also continued. Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor said he agrees with BIP-110’s goal, but argued the approach threatens Bitcoin’s neutral rules and consensus structure. Blockstream Chief Executive Officer Adam Back wrote that changes at the consensus level could undermine Bitcoin’s reliability and permanently make some unspent transaction outputs unusable.