Short-Lived BIP-110 Fork Halts After Initial Two-Block Burst

The splinter network inherited Bitcoin’s existing mining difficulty despite controlling only a sliver of total hashpower, leaving blocks spaced hours apart even as both chains continue to accept identical transactions.

The minority chain, launched Saturday after BIP-110 समर्थकों split from Bitcoin, has produced just two blocks in about eight hours, with no clear sign of ongoing miner support.

By around 6 a.m. UTC, the fork was at block 961,633, while the main Bitcoin chain had moved ahead to block 961,681, according to the BIP-110 tracker. The split took place at block 961,632, when nodes running BIP-110 software began rejecting any block that failed to signal support for the proposal.

With Bitcoin blocks typically added every ten minutes, a 48-block gap equates to nearly a full day of activity on the main chain and almost none on the fork.

BIP-110, or Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110, is designed to temporarily stop users from embedding non-financial data—such as images or text—into Bitcoin transactions for one year. Backers say this helps reduce network congestion and lowers costs for users making genuine payments.

Critics argue that anyone paying transaction fees should be free to use block space as they wish, and that miners or node operators should not decide which transactions are valid.

AntPool mined the first block that did not signal for BIP-110, which was accepted by the main network but rejected by BIP-110 nodes. Meanwhile, a miner using Ocean produced the alternative block that the forked chain followed. (Miners use large-scale computing power to secure the network and process transactions, earning rewards and fees in return.)

Both AntPool and Ocean operate as mining pools, combining resources from multiple participants and sharing rewards.

The slowdown is rooted in Bitcoin’s design. Mining difficulty is adjusted every 2,016 blocks to maintain an average block time of roughly ten minutes.

Because the fork retained this difficulty level but lacks sufficient hashpower, block production has slowed dramatically. It cannot reduce difficulty until it completes 2,016 blocks, which could take around 350 days at the current pace—compared with about 14 days on the main chain.

Support for BIP-110 has been limited, with only 2.53% of blocks signaling in favor over the past two weeks—far below the 55% threshold needed to activate the proposal without a split.

This leaves the forked asset in a tricky position for trading. Since both chains still recognize identical transactions, a transaction on the fork can be replayed on the Bitcoin network, potentially allowing a buyer to claim real BTC from the same transfer—introducing a new attack risk.

At the same time, the fork’s slow block production means transactions take far longer to confirm, further limiting its practicality.

BIP-110 nodes will continue requiring all blocks to signal support until block 963,647, but at the current pace, the chain is unlikely to reach that point within the two-week window.