BIP-110 Breaks Apart, Leaving Behind a Doomed Side Chain

A proposed rule change called BIP-110 aimed to ban the storage of non-financial data in Bitcoin transactions for one year, but it has effectively failed to activate. The supporters' efforts were met with a lack of mining support, as only 2.53% of miners signaled their approval.

Instead of accepting defeat, a small group of BIP-110 supporters created a separate version of Bitcoin that automatically rejects any block not following the new rule. However, this breakaway version has struggled to mine blocks at a reasonable pace due to its low mining power and outdated difficulty setting.

The breakaway version is expected to take around 350 days to adjust its difficulty level, which is far longer than the real Bitcoin network's 14 days. This means that the separate chain may remain frozen for nearly a year unless more miners join it.