BIP-110 Fork Collapses Amid Mining Power Shortfall

The Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP)-110, aimed at capping arbitrary data in transactions for roughly a year, has stalled after a chain split at block 961,632. The proposal's nodes broke away from the main network and produced two blocks on the new chain before ceasing activity.

Only 51 of the 2,016 blocks in the preceding difficulty period signaled support for BIP-110, falling short of the 55% threshold needed for voluntary lock-in. Since the mandatory signaling window opened, none of the first 113 blocks on the dominant chain have signaled support.

The split occurred because nodes running BIP-110 software rejected any block that failed to signal support through version bit 4. The enforcing branch remains stuck at block 961,633 while Bitcoin's dominant chain has advanced to 961,744, a gap of 111 blocks and roughly 17 hours without a new block on the fork.

Bitcoin's difficulty adjustment compounds the problem, as the fork inherits the main chain's difficulty but commands a negligible share of hashpower. Estimates suggest it could take under a year to decades for the fork to complete a full 2,016-block period and adjust its difficulty accordingly.