Bitcoin BIP-110 soft fork fails as miner support stalls at 0.89%

Bitcoin's BIP-110 soft fork failed to reach its 55 percent threshold, with miner support at 0.89 percent, triggering a minority chain split expected around August 7.

Farside UK, the on-chain tracking service that logged every BIP-110 block since March, declared the proposal finished on August 1. "BIP-110 has now failed to reach a 55% threshold and can never reach such a threshold," the account posted on X.

Only 38 blocks out of more than 9,000 mined since May 1 voted for the proposal — roughly 0.42 percent. The four major pools controlling over 70 percent of hashrate — Foundry Digital, AntPool, ViaBTC, and F2Pool — never supported it. The proposal required 1,109 blocks, or 55 percent, for lock-in.

The spin-off chain will operate without replay protection, meaning transactions broadcast on one chain could be valid on the other. Nodes running Bitcoin Knots — roughly 2 to 3 percent of the reachable network — will enforce BIP-110 rules after block 961,632, expected around August 7.

BIP-110 — formally the Reduced Data Temporary Soft Fork, authored under the pseudonym Dathon Ohm with Luke Dashjr credited for the original draft — proposed seven new consensus rules for roughly one year. The rules capped new transaction outputs at 34 bytes, limited OP_RETURN data to 83 bytes, and restricted Taproot witness data pushes to 256 bytes. The practical target was Ordinals inscriptions, BRC-20 tokens, and Runes, which supporters argued had bloated the blockchain and driven up fees during 2023 and 2024.

The proposal used a 55 percent activation threshold — far below the 95 percent standard under BIP 9 — and added a mandatory version-bit phase as a fallback. Starting around block 961,632, BIP-110-enforcing nodes would reject any block that did not vote for the change, regardless of miner agreement. This user-activated soft fork mechanism was modeled on the 2017 SegWit activation via BIP148, but unlike 2017, the economic majority never aligned behind it.

Three institutional voices proved decisive in the weeks before the failure was confirmed. Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy, published a forceful opposition statement on July 11. "BIP-110 turns a spam dispute into a consensus change that would invalidate some currently valid, fee-paying transactions," Saylor wrote. "That precedent is the danger." Adam Back, Blockstream's co-founder and inventor of Hashcash, posted that Bitcoin "respectfully says no to what you want." Samson Mow, JAN3 CEO, outlined a "1% attack" scenario showing how a minority-threshold soft fork could be gamed.

The most consequential technical detail is the absence of replay protection. Bitcoin Cash implemented replay protection in 2017 to prevent transactions from being valid on both chains. BIP-110 never included it because it was designed for consensus activation, not a chain split. For most holders, the risk is minimal: exchanges and ETF custodians operate on the main chain, and BlackRock's IBIT prospectus permanently abandons any claim to forked assets. Self-custody holders running Bitcoin Knots should understand their node will be on the minority chain after the mandatory window opens.

Coldcard Flaw Delays Activation as Holders Move Funds

The Coldcard incident added another layer. Coinkite disclosed on July 30 that some COLDCARD wallets built seed phrases with roughly 72 bits of entropy instead of 128, making them vastly easier to guess. Udi Wertheimer announced BIP-110 activation was delayed as a result, urging anyone running BIP-110 software to switch back to a standard Bitcoin node. On-chain data from CryptoQuant shows daily exchange deposits of Bitcoin under 10 BTC spiked to 7,300 BTC on July 31, the highest since February 6, as smaller holders moved funds to exchanges for safety.

The failure does not resolve the underlying dispute over what Bitcoin's blockspace is for. DOG Mode, a counter-proposal from Ordinals advocate Leonidas, would relax relay policy rather than change consensus rules, potentially freeing roughly $25 million in bitcoin currently parked below the dust limit. Some BIP-110 supporters favor a stricter follow-on proposal informally called "The Cat." Any successor would need the multi-constituency alignment that BIP-110 never achieved — miner buy-in, Bitcoin Core endorsement, and economic majority support.

The spin-off minority chain will exist briefly, process a thin stream of blocks, and expire automatically after approximately 52,416 blocks — roughly one year — without requiring any vote. For the 52 million Americans who hold digital assets, the practical takeaway is straightforward: exchange-held and ETF Bitcoin remain on the main chain, and self-custody holders should verify they are running Bitcoin Core, not Bitcoin Knots, before the mandatory window opens.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.