BIP-110 Fork Fails to Gain Traction Amid Lack of Miner Support

The Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP)-110 aimed to cap arbitrary transaction data for about a year, targeting Ordinals inscriptions and oversized OP_RETURN payloads. However, the proposal stalled at block 961,632 when nodes supporting it broke away from the main network. A mining group called Roughnecks produced two blocks, but the fork has gone nowhere since, with only 51 of the prior 2,016 blocks signaling support.

The mandatory signaling window for BIP-110 opened when the first block at height 961,632 arrived without the signal required by version bit 4. The nodes running BIP-110 software rejected this block and peeled away onto a separate chain. By Sunday afternoon, the enforcing branch remained stuck at 961,633 while Bitcoin's dominant chain had advanced to 961,744, a gap of 111 blocks and roughly 17 hours without a new block on the fork.

The lack of support for BIP-110 is evident in its activation method. Only 51 of the prior 2,016 blocks signaled support, about 2.53%, against the 55% threshold needed for voluntary lock-in. Since the mandatory window opened, none of the first 113 blocks on the dominant chain have signaled.