The BIP-110 chain split has produced just two blocks since mandatory signaling began on 8 August 2026, while Bitcoin’s dominant non-enforcing chain has advanced to block 961,744, opening a gap of 111 blocks.
The enforcing minority branch remains frozen at block 961,633. Zero of the 113 blocks mined on the dominant chain since the mandatory window opened at block 961,632 have signaled support for the proposal, continuing a trend that saw only 51 of 2,016 blocks signal in the previous difficulty period, equivalent to 2.53%.
The two blocks the minority branch does hold were mined by Roughnecks using OCEAN’s DATUM system. According to Rabid Mining, Roughnecks mined BIP-110 block 961,632 at approximately 20:12 UTC on 8 August and followed it with block 961,633 at approximately 21:49 UTC, roughly an hour and a half later. Production then stopped.
The split itself was triggered when AntPool mined the first block of the mandatory window without setting bit 4, as Simple Mining Insights reported. BIP-110 nodes rejected that block, then followed a competing version mined by Roughnecks roughly 40 minutes later. That rejection was the fork.
Why the BIP-110 Chain Split Cannot Self-Correct
The core mechanical problem is difficulty inheritance. The BIP-110 chain split away at the start of difficulty period 477, carrying Bitcoin’s full mining target of 127.48 trillion. Losing the vast majority of hash power did not make its blocks easier to find.
Bitcoin recalculates difficulty after each 2,016-block period. The BIP-110 branch has produced only two blocks in the current window and must work through the remainder before any retarget can provide relief. Strategy chairman Michael Saylor estimated that, at approximately 0.15% of Bitcoin’s hashpower, the fork could take roughly 25 years to reach its first difficulty adjustment. Both figures are Saylor’s own calculations, not measurements from the protocol itself.
Saylor separately estimated that about 99.85% of Bitcoin’s hashpower stayed with the dominant chain, calling the result decisive. Mining power can enter or leave either branch at any time, so both projections should be treated as scenario estimates rather than fixed outcomes.
OCEAN’s BIP-110 mining endpoint showed around 257 PH/s directed at the minority chain with no new block produced for approximately 17 hours at the time of the latest retrieval. Rabid Mining notes that OCEAN separated its standard Bitcoin mining endpoint from its BIP-110 endpoint, meaning miners must deliberately opt into the BIP-110 endpoint or run their own BIP-110 node via DATUM; the hash power visible on that page does not represent the entire OCEAN pool.
OCEAN Under Pressure After Hashrate Controversy
The BIP-110 chain split has produced a secondary crisis at OCEAN. According to a Yahoo Finance report citing BeInCrypto, OCEAN reportedly redirected some users’ hashrate to the BIP-110 minority chain without clear consent during an incident lasting roughly 18 hours, during which affected miners believed they were using non-BIP-110 Stratum templates. Following the incident, OCEAN’s reported hashrate collapsed by more than 96%, and miners began demanding the removal of pool leadership.
Meanwhile, EdgeX reported that Simple Mining used OCEAN’s DATUM protocol to mine block 961,634 on the main Bitcoin chain without signaling BIP-110 support, an illustration of how the same infrastructure is being used on both sides of the split.
Start9 removed its RDTS (BIP-110) package from its standard marketplace after the minority branch stalled, because a fresh node can no longer synchronise a functioning chain, per Rabid Mining’s analysis.
BIP-110 was initially proposed in October 2025. According to a Delving Bitcoin post, the first activation client launched at the end of January 2026 as a fork of Bitcoin Knots, and the proposal comprised over 8% of listening nodes after just two months. Its canonical specification on bips.dev lists the deployment under the name ‘reduced_data’, using bit 4 with a 55% signaling threshold.
The replay risk from the split remains live. BIP-110 provides no inherent replay protection, meaning a transaction signed on one branch can potentially be rebroadcast on the other. Bitcoin developer Kevin Loaec warned that attempting to sell minority-fork coins without first separating pre-split balances could expose corresponding funds on the dominant chain. Users who leave pre-split outputs untouched do not create a replayable signed transaction.
A contingency pathway exists. A GitHub branch maintained by Chris Guida contains 12 commits relating to a potential proof-of-work algorithm change and hard fork configuration, though no activation time is set and Guida has described the work as contingency code rather than a scheduled deployment.
Mandatory signaling continues through block 963,647. Under BIP-110’s rules, the proposal enters LOCKED_IN no later than block 963,648 and moves to ACTIVE one difficulty period later, with reduced-data consensus rules activating at block 965,664 for 52,416 blocks. Those heights are trivial for the dominant chain to reach. For the minority branch, still at block 961,633, the path there depends entirely on whether substantial new hash power arrives.
