# Bitcoin's BIP-110 Chain Splits Off With 2.6% of Miners, Mines Two Blocks and Stalls

The breakaway chain inherited bitcoin's full mining difficulty with almost no hashpower behind it, and because both chains accept identical transactions, holders who move coins risk having those transactions replayed.

- Published: 2026-08-09T06:30:14.346Z
- Canonical: https://polylog.news/crypto/2026-08-09/bitcoin-s-bip-110-chain-splits-off-with-2-6-of-miners-mines
- Publisher: Polylog (Crypto desk)
- Section: crypto
- Sources: [CoinDesk](https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/08/09/controversial-bitcoin-fork-bip-110-mines-two-blocks-then-stops), [CoinDesk](https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/08/07/frame-bitcoin-s-bip-110-enters-mandatory-signaling-with-less-than-3-miner-support), [crypto.news](https://crypto.news/bitcoin-bip-110-fork-expose-holders-to-replay-attacks/)

Bitcoin reached block 961,632 over the weekend, the height at which nodes running the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 (BIP-110) begin rejecting any block that does not carry a specific signal. The next block arrived without that signal. Those nodes rejected it and [separated from the main chain](https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/08/07/frame-bitcoin-s-bip-110-enters-mandatory-signaling-with-less-than-3-miner-support), producing the first deliberate consensus split in bitcoin in years.

The split chain then [mined two blocks and stopped](https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/08/09/controversial-bitcoin-fork-bip-110-mines-two-blocks-then-stops). The arithmetic explains why. A fork keeps the difficulty target of the chain it leaves, so a network carrying a small fraction of total hashpower needs a correspondingly larger amount of time to find each block. Miner support for the proposal, which its authors call the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork and which is aimed at limiting inscriptions and large data payloads embedded in transactions, [never exceeded roughly 2.6%](https://primexbt.com/news/bitcoins-bip-110-soft-fork-faces-mandatory-signaling-with-support-at-2-6/), far below the 55% threshold its supporters had set. Blocks on the minority chain are now hours apart.

The practical hazard is not the fork's survival but its shared transaction format. Both chains validate the same signatures, so a spend broadcast on one can be rebroadcast on the other. Bitcoin developer Kevin Loaec [warned holders](https://crypto.news/bitcoin-bip-110-fork-expose-holders-to-replay-attacks/) not to move coins created on the split chain before separating their balances, because doing so can cause a matching spend of real bitcoin on the main chain. Neither chain has implemented replay protection.

The underlying dispute has not been settled by the outcome. Supporters of BIP-110 argue that arbitrary data storage degrades bitcoin as a monetary network and raises the cost of running a full node. Opponents argue that fee-paying transactions cannot be filtered on ideological grounds and that miners, not activists, decide what is included. What the weekend established is only that the activist side cannot force the question through mandatory signaling when it holds a small share of hashpower.

## What this means

A minority soft fork with inherited difficulty is economically inert, because it cannot produce blocks fast enough to settle anything, but it still creates a real loss channel for ordinary holders through transaction replay. The people exposed are self-custody users and exchanges that credit deposits from either chain without checking which one a transaction originated on. The wider point is that bitcoin's rules cannot be changed by a determined minority, which protects the network against capture but also means the data-limit dispute moves to node relay policy and client defaults rather than consensus.

## What to watch

- Whether any hashpower shifts onto the BIP-110 chain in the coming days, which would turn a stalled chain into a slow but functioning one and give exchanges a reason to consider listing a separate asset.
- Whether Bitcoin Core and alternative clients change their default relay policy on large data payloads, since that would move the inscription fight into software defaults where no miner vote is required.
- Whether any exchange offers coin-splitting tools, which would signal that it expects the forked chain to persist long enough to matter to customers.