Author:Bitcoin Orange Trader
With only 2.53% support, BIP-110 still forked Bitcoin: Can it succeed?
On August 8, the Bitcoin network split into two mutually incompatible chains.
What was even more unusual was that BIP-110, which drove this fork, had only received signaling support from 51 blocks in the previous 2016-block cycle, representing a mere 2.53% support rate. However, after block height 961632, nodes running BIP-110 followed the predetermined rules and began rejecting all blocks that did not signal bit 4.
The majority of miners did not support it and continued to mine blocks under the original rules. The minority of nodes and miners executing BIP-110 remained on the other chain. As of 9:00 AM Beijing Time on August 9, the main chain with higher cumulative proof-of-work had reached block 961654, while the BIP-110 execution chain was stuck at 961633, lagging by 21 blocks. In the first 23 blocks of the new cycle, not a single one signaled support for BIP-110 on the main chain.
This is not an evenly matched hash power battle. The main chain is progressing normally, while the BIP-110 chain, due to its low hash power, is significantly lagging in block production speed.
Who is driving this fork?
BIP-110 was proposed by pseudonymous developer Dathon Ohm, with Luke Dashjr participating in early drafts and technical advice. Its reference implementation is based on Bitcoin Knots maintained by Luke, and it was not merged into Bitcoin Core, nor did it gain support from a majority of miners.
It is not part of Bitcoin Core's mainnet upgrade roadmap. The actual drivers are some Knots node operators and a minority of miners. This is a UASF attempt: even if miners do not achieve sufficient signaling support, nodes can still proactively tighten the rules for the blocks they accept, forcing the network to make a choice.
Why are these people insisting on pushing BIP-110?
The background remains the ongoing controversy over inscriptions spanning several years.
Ordinals, BRC-20, and Runes write image, text, and token data into Bitcoin blocks. Supporters of these use cases believe that block space is essentially a fee market; miners can include whatever people are willing to pay for. Supporters of BIP-110, on the other hand, believe that Bitcoin should primarily be a monetary and payment network, and that large amounts of arbitrary data increase blockchain size, imposing long-term storage, bandwidth, verification, and propagation costs on all full nodes.
Data publishers pay a fee only once, but once the data enters a block, nodes worldwide must store it permanently. The publisher and miner complete a transaction, but the subsequent costs are left to the entire network. BIP-110 aims to turn this conflict from a policy issue of "whether nodes are willing to relay, whether mining pools are willing to include" into a consensus rule.
It plans to be temporarily enforced for about one year upon activation. Most new output scripts cannot exceed 34 bytes, the OP_RETURN limit becomes 83 bytes, data pushes and some witness elements cannot exceed 256 bytes, and certain Taproot constructions that could be used to carry data are disabled. Old UTXOs are exempt, and regular payment transactions are mostly unaffected.
Opponents are concerned about more than just whether inscriptions can still be created. BIP-110 turns some transaction uses from a fee market issue into a consensus judgment of valid or invalid, which could affect Miniscript, BitVM, and future protocols using Taproot. It also cannot completely eliminate on-chain data; users can still split data and change encodings, albeit at higher costs and with more complex operations.
Why push so hard despite such low support?
Because BIP-110 supporters do not believe miner signaling equals a final vote. In the logic of a UASF, nodes have the right to decide what blocks are valid; if enough users, wallets, exchanges, and payment services adopt the new rules, miners will ultimately follow to avoid mining blocks that no one accepts.
BIP-110 sets the miner lock-in threshold at 55%, lower than the traditional BIP9 common 95%. The more radical part comes later: even if the threshold is not met in the long term leading up to it, the period from block 961632 to 963647 will still enter a mandatory signaling period. BIP-110 nodes will consider blocks not signaling bit 4 as invalid. Their chain will lock in after block 963648, go through another 2016-block cycle, and plan to formally enforce data restrictions at block 965664.
It bets that nodes and economic actors will take sides first, forcing hash power to follow. Current on-chain results show this bet has not paid off yet. The majority of miners continue to extend the original chain, while nodes running BIP-110 can only wait for their blocks on a low-hash-power branch.
What is currently happening is only a signaling rule fork. The data limits of 34, 83, and 256 bytes have not taken effect on the Bitcoin mainnet; the BIP-110 chain hasn't even reached the formal lock-in and enforcement stage yet.
Is success still possible?
We need to look at two separate things.
As long as there are miners willing to produce blocks, the BIP-110 chain can continue to exist and will eventually activate its rules at its own chain height. However, for it to become the Bitcoin main chain in economic terms, it requires sustained hash power and collective recognition from exchanges, wallets, custody platforms, Lightning services, and coin holders. Nodes can reject main chain blocks, but rejection alone cannot make others recognize their chain.
Time is also a significant hard barrier. When the BIP-110 chain forked, it inherited the mainnet's mining difficulty. Bitcoin adjusts difficulty only every 2016 blocks, with a maximum downward adjustment of 4x per period. Roughly estimating the execution chain's hash power using the previous 2.53% signaling rate, completing its first cycle might take about 553 days; after difficulty adjustment, reaching the formal activation would take another approximately 138 days, totaling nearly 690 days, or about 1.9 years.
This is not a fixed date. The timeframe can be significantly shortened with the addition of new hash power. However, it illustrates that BIP-110, even if it can activate on its own chain, might first experience a very long period of slow progress. The wait before activation could even be longer than the rule's originally planned one-year enforcement period.
Ordinary coin holders currently do not need to interpret this as "Bitcoin's rules have already changed."
The main chain with the highest cumulative proof-of-work still operates under the original rules. The 21 million coin cap, existing balances, and daily payments remain unchanged. The risks are primarily concentrated on nodes, wallets, and service providers using the BIP-110 backend: the two chains see different confirmation states, and this fork lacks dedicated replay protection, meaning a single regular transaction might be valid on both sides.
The current outcome: BIP-110 has not activated on the Bitcoin mainnet; it first created a low-hash-power execution chain.
