BIP-110 Chain Split Sparks Controversy as Mining Power Fails to Back Proposal

A Bitcoin chain split occurred at block 961,632 after proponents of BIP-110 failed to gain meaningful support from miners. The split was predicted by critics of the proposal, which aimed to restrict arbitrary non-financial data in transactions. BIP-110's supporters argue that Bitcoin is not designed for general-purpose data storage.

However, the opposing view holds that restrictive policies are ineffective as data can find alternative routes into blocks. This led to a significant increase in the OP_RETURN limit in 2025 with Bitcoin Core 30.

The BIP-110 branch has rapidly fallen behind the main Bitcoin network, producing blocks at an average interval of about 6.9 hours compared to the normal block-production target of one block every 10 minutes.

Blockstream CEO Adam Back responded sarcastically, stating 'They forked off and found out.' Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy, warned that the fork would stall into irrelevance due to lack of miner support.