BIP-110 Upgrade Fails to Gain Traction as Bitcoin Network Remains Intact

A proposed upgrade to Bitcoin, BIP-110, triggered its mandatory signaling phase last Saturday at block 961,632. However, it failed to gain sufficient support from miners, with only 51 out of 2,016 blocks displaying the required signal, translating to a mere 2.53% adoption rate.

The proposal's core provisions aim to introduce temporary constraints on Bitcoin's block space utilization for approximately twelve months. These restrictions would impose a 34-byte ceiling on most fresh output scripts, establish an 83-byte maximum for OP_RETURN outputs, and enforce 256-byte limitations on particular data pushes and witness components.

Despite inheriting Bitcoin's existing mining difficulty level, the BIP-110 chain controls only a minimal portion of aggregate hashpower. This has led to a significant delay in the next difficulty recalibration, projected to occur in approximately 350 days. In contrast, the main chain's recalculation is expected every 14 days.

Notable figures like Michael Saylor and Adam Back have expressed concerns that BIP-110 could fracture the Bitcoin network. Saylor noted that the BIP-110 fork has secured only 0.15% of Bitcoin's hashpower, with the majority remaining on the main chain.