BIP110 Bitcoin Split Chain Mines Two Blocks, Then Grinds to a Halt

A minority Bitcoin chain launched by BIP110 supporters after a Saturday split has managed to mine only two blocks about eight hours after going live, with no clear indication that miners plan to keep building it. According to the BIP110 situation monitor, the breakaway chain is stuck at block 961,633, while the main Bitcoin network has advanced to block 961,681. The divergence occurred at block 961,632, when nodes running BIP110 software began rejecting any block that did not signal support for the proposal. With Bitcoin typically adding a block roughly every 10 minutes, the 48-block gap represents close to a day's worth of activity on the main chain and almost none on the fork. BIP110 (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110) seeks to prevent people from embedding pictures, text and other non-financial data in Bitcoin transactions for a year. Supporters argue that such usage can clog the network with non-payment data and raise costs for users sending money. Critics counter that anyone paying the fee should be free to use block space as they choose, and that miners and node operators should not decide which transactions are legitimate. Bitcoin mining firm AntPool produced the first non-signalling block, which the broader network accepted but BIP110 nodes rejected. A miner using Ocean then mined the alternative block that the breakaway chain followed. AntPool and Ocean are mining pools, where many participants contribute computing power and share rewards. The chain's stall also reflects a structural hurdle. Bitcoin adjusts mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks to target 10-minute block times. The fork inherited Bitcoin's current difficulty while commanding only a small fraction of total hash power, so blocks arrive far less frequently. Difficulty cannot be reduced until the chain completes 2,016 blocks under those conditions. The monitor estimates that would take about 350 days for the fork, versus about 14 days for Bitcoin. Signalling support for BIP110 had been minimal. Only 2.53% of blocks over the past two weeks signalled for the proposal, well below the 55% threshold needed to activate it without a split. That leaves the forked coin in a difficult spot for anyone hoping to trade it. Both chains currently accept identical transactions, meaning a signed transaction spending fork coins can also be replayed on the Bitcoin network. A buyer could rebroadcast it to claim BTC from the same seller, creating the risk of a replay-style attack that users will need to watch closely. At the same time, a chain producing one block every several hours is slow to confirm trades, further undermining liquidity. The two-week period during which BIP110 nodes require every block to signal support runs through block 963,647. At the pace seen over the past day, the breakaway chain is unlikely to come close to reaching it.