Bitcoin at crossroads as BIP-110 enters final window

On July 25 Bitcoin began the final ordinary 2,016-block window for BIP-110 with miner signaling at 0.89%. The proposal requires 1,109 of 2,016 blocks, or 55%, to lock in an ordinary soft-fork. If support stays below 55% the process can move into a version-bit activation that narrows the review period; that transition can begin in August.

BIP-110 links technical changes to a single on-chain record of network coordination. Developers, miners, node operators, exchanges, custodians and holders each provide different forms of consent during the process. The outcome will show how the network coordinated on maintenance, covenant tools and post‑quantum plans.

Consensus Cleanup, packaged as BIP-54, groups four protocol repairs specified by Antoine Poinsot and Matt Corallo and exercised on experimental signet. The fixes target four documented issues: a timewarp attack that lets a majority of hash power push mining difficulty toward its minimum in about 38 days; specially crafted blocks that impose extreme validation costs and can take minutes on high-end hardware or hours on weaker machines; a Merkle-tree ambiguity tied to a 64-byte transaction format last seen on-chain in 2016; and a class of future duplicate-transaction checks that complicates legacy exception handling.

One practical change in the package caps signature operations per transaction, reducing the worst-case validation cost by roughly a factor of 40 and lowering load on low-resource nodes. Because these repairs change the rules that define a valid block, reviewers have focused on edge cases across the specification, reference code and test vectors and on months of signet use. Developers who maintain the signet warn that delaying adoption would leave the four documented weaknesses in place and could make later reviews more urgent.

Covenant work has entered active testing on signet. Bitcoin Inquisition enabled BIP-446’s OP_TEMPLATEHASH at signet block 314,928 on July 27. OP_TEMPLATEHASH lets a Tapscript commit to the exact transaction permitted to spend an output. Implementations of that primitive include vault designs that announce an attempted withdrawal and create a delay during which owners can redirect funds or block an unauthorized spend.

BIP-448 proposes a three-opcode package that pairs TEMPLATEHASH with OP_CHECKSIGFROMSTACK and OP_INTERNALKEY. The wider package targets rebindable transactions, simpler payment channels, multiparty Lightning constructs, statechains and related designs. Signet testing offers a comparison between a narrow TEMPLATEHASH activation, which has a smaller review surface and enables earlier vault tooling, and BIP-448’s broader capabilities that would require a larger consensus review. Extended testing keeps current consensus rules in place and maintains reliance on custodial solutions and presigned transactions. Faster activation would make new custody primitives available sooner.

BIP-361, a draft co-authored by Jameson Lopp, builds a five-year timetable for post-quantum migration into consensus policy. Under the draft, activation starts a migration clock. Around year three nodes would stop creating new quantum-vulnerable outputs. By about year five legacy ECDSA and Schnorr verification rules would be tightened, requiring a quantum-safe rescue protocol to spend legacy outputs. The draft does not specify a single rescue design, so exchanges, custodians, wallet providers and individual holders would need to plan migrations and produce rescue procedures that include proof rules, privacy protections and fraud controls.

The coming weeks will determine whether the network reaches the miner support and cross-stakeholder consent needed to carry Consensus Cleanup, covenant primitives and post‑quantum rules through ordinary review, or whether those proposals will enter a version-bit phase that shortens review time.