Silent Miner Boycott Halts BIP-110, Leaving Enforcing Chain 57 Blocks Behind

Woofun AI reports that a silent miner boycott halted the BIP-110 enforcing chain, causing Bitcoin to split overnight. Major pools including Foundry, F2Pool, AntPool, ViaBTC, and MARA continued operations on the dominant branch, leaving the proposal's state machine stalled.

The technical mechanics of the split reveal a stark divergence in chain status. Nodes enforcing the proposal were stranded on a two-block branch, trailing the dominant proof-of-work chain by 57 blocks. Under the BIP-110 state machine, a compliant enforcing chain must reach height 963,648 to enter LOCKED_IN status. The proposed restrictions only become ACTIVE if that chain subsequently reaches height 965,664, one retarget period later. Consequently, the transaction restrictions remain two stages away from activation during this mandatory signaling phase.

Woofun AI data shows that 59 consecutive non-signaling blocks were produced by miners on the dominant branch. Blocks attributed to major pools appeared exclusively on this branch, with explorer attribution rather than formal policy declarations.

Notably, 1,957 blocks remained in the mandatory-signaling window at the snapshot time. The zero-of-59 result establishes a clear absence of dominant-chain signaling to date, leaving the final outcome open despite the lack of observed major-pool switches.

The current fork represents a measurable minority split with little observed mining support for the enforcing chain. Operational normalcy persists across exchanges, as Coinbase and Kraken status feeds indicated standard Bitcoin operations. This marks a significant instance of miner resistance halting a soft fork proposal through passive non-compliance.