Backers Restart BIP-110 Chain, Propose PoW Change

Backers of the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-110 restarted a minority chain that stalled at block 961,633 after producing two blocks. They say they will resume mining on that branch and work on a change to Bitcoin’s proof-of-work (PoW) to replace mining pools that did not support the soft fork.

BIP-110 was a proposed soft fork designed to temporarily restrict some forms of arbitrary data embedded in Bitcoin blocks. The proposal required 55% miner signaling during its deployment window. Signaling peaked at only a few percentage points. When mandatory signaling began at block 961,632, nodes running BIP-110 rejected blocks they considered invalid and split from the dominant network, creating a minority branch that mined two blocks before stopping at height 961,633.

The first two blocks on the minority branch were mined by a pseudonymous group called Roughnecks. Roughnecks paused after the chain stalled but announced on Aug. 10 that they would resume mining from block 961,633 and continue until a PoW change could be implemented. The group identified Bitcoin Knots-RDTS as its reference client and characterized miners on the dominant chain as having “forked themselves off the network.” Opponents of BIP-110 reject that characterization.

Dathon Ohm, the author of BIP-110, accused large mining pools of colluding to preserve blocks BIP-110 nodes treated as invalid and said supporters are developing a PoW change intended to remove those pools. Luke Dashjr, a visible developer backer of BIP-110, argued the proposal still had community support and described the attackers as a small group, adding that a PoW change would eliminate their influence.

Critics framed the weekend events as a rejection of BIP-110 by economic actors on the network. Michael Saylor estimated roughly 99.85% of Bitcoin’s hashpower remained on the dominant chain and placed about 0.15% behind the minority branch; at that rate he calculated the branch could need roughly 25 years to mine the 2,016 blocks required for its first difficulty adjustment. David Bailey, CEO of the Bitcoin treasury company Nakamoto, called BIP-110 the least popular and most inconsequential soft fork attempted.

The activation and its aftermath also triggered a dispute within the BIP editorial process. Mark “Murch” Erhardt proposed removing Dashjr from the editorial team, accusing him of assigning a BIP number before a standard mailing-list discussion and of merging a related update minutes after a pull request. Several BIP editors, including Matt Corallo and Olaoluwa Osuntokun, supported the removal effort. Jonas Nick backed removing Dashjr, while Antoine Riard said Dashjr should step aside but noted the BIP process lacks a clear forced-removal procedure. Dashjr denied the accusations and called for Murch’s removal. The proposal has been entered as GitHub pull request 2248, which remained open after the weekend.

A PoW change would be more disruptive than the original soft fork. Bitcoin miners use specialized SHA-256 hardware; an incompatible PoW algorithm would require different mining equipment and force supporters to build a new set of miners, wallets, exchanges and liquidity. Roughnecks said they will continue mining the minority branch “until a sensible POW change” can replace the pools they blame for abandoning the branch.

The revived chain currently carries Bitcoin’s existing difficulty level and is secured by a small fraction of the computing power protecting the dominant network. Supporters are proceeding with renewed mining and research into a possible PoW revision while developers and community members debate BIP editorial conduct and the technical and economic consequences of further changes.