Bitcoin’s BIP-110 fork is 300 blocks behind BTC and six years from fixing itself
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Summary
A proposed Bitcoin protocol change called BIP-110 triggered a chain split on Saturday, creating a breakaway chain that has produced only two blocks and stalled significantly. The forked chain is now 326 blocks behind the main Bitcoin network because it inherited Bitcoin’s high mining difficulty but offers a coin with no market value, providing miners little incentive to secure it. The chain cannot adjust its mining difficulty until it reaches 2,016 blocks, a milestone estimated to be more than six years away.
Why it matters
This development shows the challenges in changing Bitcoin’s rules and maintaining network security for a fork without broad miner support. The chain’s inability to lower mining difficulty and attract miners highlights the economic and technical hurdles a split can face, potentially affecting network reliability and user confidence. Observers note it is still early to determine if the effort to implement BIP-110 is definitively failing.
Key context
BIP-110 intended to ban storing non-payment data such as pictures and text in Bitcoin transactions for one year, requiring 55% miner support to activate. Instead of majority approval, a minority of nodes running BIP-110 software forcibly rejected blocks not signaling support, triggering the chain split at block 961,632. Both chains started with the same mining difficulty, recalculated every 2,016 blocks (roughly two weeks on the main chain). The fork must produce 2,016 blocks before it can adjust mining difficulty to attract miners.
Key numbers and entities
The forked chain currently sits at block 961,633 (its second block) while Bitcoin’s main chain reached block 961,959, leaving the fork 326 blocks behind. BIP-110 peaked at about 2.6% miner support, far below the 55% needed. The difficulty adjustment for the forked chain is now estimated to be 6.3 years away, raised from 350 days shortly after the split. Bitcoin recalculates difficulty every 2,016 blocks and is due for an adjustment in 12 days on the main chain. Himanshu Sahay, co-founder of Arch, commented on the situation stating it is too early to declare failure.
What remains unclear
The source flags uncertainty about the ultimate success or failure of the BIP-110 fork, noting it is too early to draw firm conclusions based on initial block production. It does not provide definitive information about future miner actions or whether the fork will gain traction.