BIP-110 enters mandatory signaling with 2.53% miner support and stalls after two blocks. Supporters are now discussing a proof-of-work change: the creation of a new shitcoin
At block 961,632, on Saturday 8 August 2026, BIP-110 entered its mandatory signaling window. Nodes enforcing the proposal began rejecting blocks that lacked version bit 4. Only 51 of the 2,016 blocks in the preceding period had signaled support: 2.53%, well short of the 55% threshold required for early activation. The minority chain produced by BIP-110 supporters – led by pool Roughnecks, operating via Ocean, with backing from a handful of smaller miners but none of the large pools – fell 18 blocks behind the main chain within hours, and later exceeded 180.
Dathon Ohm, the pseudonymous developer behind the proposal (in all likelihood Chris Guida), described the situation as a hostile attack by miners. Luke Dashjr, creator of Bitcoin Knots, publicly urged users to upgrade to Bitcoin Knots 29.3.knots20260508 (or 29.4) to avoid what he described as a double-spending risk. The reaction from Antpool – the pool that mined the first unsigned block at block 961,632, triggering the rejection by BIP-110 nodes – was the most eloquent of all: no press release, no negotiation, just work.
BIP-110 proposed temporary one-year restrictions on block space: a 34-byte limit on most new output scripts, an 83-byte cap on OP_RETURN, 256-byte restrictions on data pushes and witness elements, and some Taproot functionality temporarily constrained. The stated goal was to discourage Ordinals inscriptions and other non-monetary data that increase storage and bandwidth costs for node operators. Critics including Michael Saylor and Adam Back argued the proposal could split Bitcoin and cause nodes to reject transactions that are valid under the protocol’s existing rules.
Mining difficulty at the moment of the split stood at 127.48 trillion – an adjustment that occurred precisely at block 961,632, a brutal coincidence for supporters of the minority chain. With a fraction of total hashrate, Roughnecks produces blocks at intervals incompatible with any practical use of the network. On 9 August the pool announced it was halting operations on the BIP-110 chain, calling it “not a defeat but an escalation to the next step” – before resuming mining the following day. The BIP-110 chain is functionally stalled.
Who actually decides what Bitcoin becomes
The recurring narrative around protocol change proposals tends to reduce Bitcoin’s governance to a standoff between developers and miners. The BIP-110 case reveals something more precise. Miners – including the largest pools such as Antpool and Foundry, cited explicitly by Dashjr as entities exposing users to double-spending – exercised an economic veto simply by continuing to do their job. The protocol absorbed the pressure and produced the expected result: the majority chain advances, the minority chain stalls.
This is the mechanism that distinguishes Bitcoin from any formal governance system. Consensus is an emergent state arising from the interaction between nodes, miners, developers, and users. None of these actors holds unilateral power. Miners can refuse to signal, as they did. Nodes can refuse to enforce the rules of a minority chain, as they did. Developers can write code, but code becomes protocol only if the network adopts it. BIP-110 passed through every one of these stages and met structural resistance at each one.
The question of Ordinals and non-monetary inscriptions on Bitcoin is real, but a protocol change with 2.53% miner support remains an attempt at imposition, regardless of the technical quality of the proposal.
From veto to shitcoin: the proposal to change proof of work
The response of BIP-110 supporters to the signaling failure follows a script already seen in Bitcoin’s history. Peter Todd, in his code review of 7 August, had already documented it: BIP-110 supporters are openly discussing a proof-of-work change as the next step. Public figures in the movement are debating the possibility of a hard fork that would modify the mining algorithm or reduce the difficulty, to make the minority chain functional again.
If existing miners refuse to signal, change the algorithm to make them irrelevant. If the difficulty is too high for the remaining hashrate, lower it by decree. The result would be a chain that shares Bitcoin’s history up to block 961,632 but changes its fundamental rules: a new shitcoin, to use the technically appropriate term.
