A breakaway Bitcoin (BTC) chain built around the contested BIP-110 anti-spam proposal stalled after mining just two blocks. It attracted only about 2.5% of the network’s hashrate, far short of the 55% threshold the soft fork needed to activate.
The minority chain split from Bitcoin at block 961,632 on Saturday, when nodes running BIP-110 software began rejecting blocks that did not signal support for the proposal. It produced blocks 961,632 and 961,633 over roughly eight hours, then went quiet, according to Decrypt. By Monday the main Bitcoin chain had advanced past block 961,725, leaving the fork more than 200 blocks behind, CoinDesk reported.
For one year, BIP-110 would bar non-financial data from Bitcoin transactions. That means images, text, and the inscriptions popularized by Ordinals. Backers argue that data clogs the network and drives up fees. Opponents counter that anyone paying for block space has the right to use it, and that policing transaction content erodes Bitcoin’s censorship resistance. In practice, the dispute is less about spam than about who decides what counts as a legitimate transaction.
The fork chain inherited Bitcoin’s current difficulty setting while commanding only about 2.53% of its hashpower, Decrypt noted. At that pace it would need roughly 350 days to reach its next difficulty adjustment. Bitcoin needs about two weeks. Blocks came hours apart. Cointelegraph, which framed the fork as “dead on arrival”, put support at “just 2.5%”. CoinDesk said “about 2.6%.” All three outlets agreed it fell dozens of times short of the 55% bar.
The split exposed divisions not just between pools but within them. Ocean, a mining pool, switched its default to signal BIP-110 support in July and accounted for nearly all of the proposal’s mining power before the breakaway. Yet a company called Simple Mining, which runs machines through Ocean, used the pool’s DATUM protocol to decline the signal and mined block 961,634 on the main chain instead. That was two blocks past the fork point.
DATUM gives individual miners control over the blocks they produce rather than letting the pool decide. Simple Mining used that control to leave the BIP-110 signal out. “Hashrate is a vote you cannot fake, and we decided the proposal wasn’t worth following,” Simple Mining wrote on X. A miner on Ocean had produced the first block accepted by the BIP-110 branch. Simple Mining then used the same pool to make the opposite choice.
That a miner overrode its own pool’s default is the part that is new. Mining pools normally combine computing power from many operators, and the pool usually decides which transactions go into blocks and what software signals they carry. DATUM moves that decision back to the individual miner. It is a structural feature that turned the BIP-110 vote into a test of how much control pools actually have.
The fork’s collapse drew sharp reactions. Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy, posted on X on August 9: “Bitcoin worked exactly as designed. BIP-110 was free to fork, and the network was free not to follow. The result was decisive: about 99.85% of Bitcoin’s hash power stayed with Bitcoin. The BIP-110 branch mined only two blocks and is already more than 80 blocks behind.” Saylor had previously warned that turning a spam dispute into a consensus change sets a dangerous precedent.
Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, cautioned that a consensus-level change could damage Bitcoin’s credibility and potentially make certain unspent transaction outputs unspendable, Cointelegraph reported. Bitcoin Core developer Murch subsequently proposed removing BIP-110 backer Luke Dashjr from his position as a BIP Editor.
Because both chains accept identical transactions, a sale on the minority chain can be replayed on Bitcoin, potentially handing a buyer real BTC from the same seller. No exchange has announced plans to list the fork chain’s coins. The mandatory signaling window closes at block 963,647, a mark the breakaway chain will not approach. Cointelegraph’s verdict, in its August 9 Hodler’s Digest, was that BIP-110 “forks itself into oblivion” with a two-block chain.
Holders, as ever, are divided.
