BIP-110 Fork Stalls at Two Blocks Amid Miner Apathy and Technical Hurdles

Woofun AI reports that the BIP-110 Bitcoin fork event, which initiated a split on Saturday, has effectively stalled after producing merely two blocks, with major entities like AntPool and Ocean showing no intent to sustain the minority chain. This abrupt halt highlights a severe lack of miner participation and technical viability for the breakaway network.

The current disparity between the fork and the main chain is stark, as the minority network sits at block 961,633 while the primary Bitcoin ledger has advanced to block 961,681, according to the BIP-110 situation monitor. This gap of 48 blocks, accumulated over roughly eight hours, represents most of a day's worth of activity on the main network versus almost none on the fork. The divergence underscores the immediate failure of the minority chain to maintain pace with the established protocol.

Structurally, the split occurred at block 961,632, when nodes running Bitcoin Improvement Proposal-110 software began rejecting any block that did not signal support for the proposal. Since a block is a batch of transactions added to bitcoin's ledger roughly every ten minutes, the technical definition of the fork hinges on this signaling mechanism. The proposal aims to stop people from storing pictures, text, and other non-financial data inside bitcoin transactions for one year, creating a rigid boundary for transaction validity.

The ideological debate surrounding these specific mining actions reveals deep divisions within the community. AntPool mined the first non-signaling block, which the rest of the network accepted but BIP-110 nodes rejected, while a miner using Ocean produced the alternative block that the breakaway chain followed instead. These mining pools, where many operators combine their machines and share rewards, illustrate the fragmented nature of support, as miners are not unified in enforcing the new rules.

A more critical variable is the difficulty adjustment mechanics, which dictate the timeline projections for the fork's survival. Bitcoin recalculates mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks to keep blocks arriving roughly every ten minutes, but the breakaway chain inherited the current setting with a tiny share of machines, causing blocks to arrive at long intervals. Per Woofun AI, the monitor puts the next adjustment 350 days away for the fork, compared to just 14 days for the main Bitcoin network, trapping the minority chain in a period of extreme inefficiency.

Support statistics further cement the fork's precarious position, as only 2.53% of blocks signaled for BIP-110 over the past two weeks, far below the 55% needed to activate it without a split. This leaves the fork coin vulnerable to double-spend risks, as both chains accept identical transactions, allowing a buyer to rebroadcast a signed transaction on Bitcoin to collect real BTC from the same seller. With the two-week window for BIP-110 nodes demanding support running to block 963,647, and the chain producing blocks at a glacial pace, the minority network is unlikely to reach this threshold, marking a definitive failure of the hard fork attempt.