Follow-up to: BIP-110 Explained: What Bitcoin Miners Need to Know (published July 14, 2026)
Explain It Like I’m 5
A small group wanted a new rule for Bitcoin’s shared notebook: money notes only, no pictures. Almost nobody agreed, so they started their own notebook instead.
Their notebook had the same heavy lock as the real one but only a handful of people to pick it. They got two pages open in eight hours, then got stuck. Everyone else kept writing in the original and never looked back.
Key Takeaways (TL;DR)
- BIP-110 failed and the fight is over. It split off on August 8, mined two blocks in about eight hours, then stalled. The proposal is now marked Closed.
- It never came close. Only 51 of 2,016 blocks (2.53%) signaled support against its own 55% bar, and 99.85% of hashrate stayed on the main chain.
- Nothing changed for miners on the main chain. Blocks kept coming every 10 minutes and payouts continued normally throughout.
In our July breakdown we said BIP-110 would likely end in a quiet failure or a small minority chain split. That is close to exactly what happened, and it took eight hours. Here is the timeline without the jargon.
The Timeline
- June 2026: Signaling opens. Miners can flag support in the blocks they mine. Support never breaks 1%.
- July 11: Michael Saylor publishes a 110-point essay against it. Adam Back joins the opposition the same weekend.
- Late July: Support peaks at 2.53%, or 51 blocks out of 2,016. The threshold was 55%.
- August 7: Mandatory signaling begins at block 961,632. BIP-110 nodes must now reject any block that does not signal.
- August 8: The main chain mines a normal block without the signal. BIP-110 nodes reject it and start their own chain.
- Eight hours later: That chain mines two blocks, then stops. It has sat frozen near block 961,633 ever since.
Why It Froze So Fast
Bitcoin’s difficulty is tuned so the whole global network finds a block every 10 minutes. BIP-110 inherited that full difficulty but took only about 0.15% of the hashrate with it, like keeping an Olympic-height bar and losing all but one of your jumpers.
Difficulty only recalculates every 2,016 blocks. With blocks arriving that slowly, the next adjustment sits an estimated 350 days out. The chain cannot mine fast enough to earn the relief that would let it mine faster.
What Miners Should Take From This
Hashrate follows economics, not ideology, and 97% of miners declined to cut their own fee revenue. Consensus changes need the economic side of the network, not just working code.
One real risk did surface: BIP-110 shipped without replay protection, so anyone transacting during the split window could have had a transaction replayed on the other chain. Miners who sat still were fine, which is usually the right call during a fork.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is BIP-110 completely dead, or could it come back?
The proposal is marked Closed and the chain is frozen. But backers have floated changing the proof-of-work algorithm to escape the miners who rejected them, which would create a separate cryptocurrency rather than revive BIP-110.
Did anyone lose bitcoin in the split?
No confirmed losses were reported. The exposure was replay risk for people actively transacting across both chains, not for holders or miners who did nothing.
Does this make future Bitcoin upgrades harder?
Probably yes. BIP-110 tried to activate at 55% instead of the traditional 95% and failed badly, strengthening the case that consensus changes need near-unanimity.