Bitcoin’s BIP-110 Fork Stalls After Just Two Blocks

A minority chain formed by BIP-110 supporters has barely moved since splitting from Bitcoin on Saturday, adding only two blocks in about eight hours. Over the same stretch, the main Bitcoin chain pushed ahead by 48 blocks, according to the BIP-110 situation monitor.

Why the New Chain Is So Slow

The split happened at block 961,632, when BIP-110 nodes began rejecting blocks that didn’t support the proposal. AntPool mined the first block the main network accepted, while a miner using Ocean produced the block the new chain followed. Because the breakaway chain kept Bitcoin’s existing mining difficulty but has only a small slice of total computing power, its blocks arrive far apart — and it can’t adjust that difficulty until it completes 2,016 blocks, a process expected to take roughly 350 days.

Weak Support From the Start

Only 2.53% of blocks signaled support for BIP-110 over the past two weeks, well short of the 55% needed for the proposal to activate without triggering a split.

A Risky Trade for Buyers

Since both chains still process identical transactions, a transaction sent on the new chain can also be rebroadcast on Bitcoin, letting a buyer collect real BTC from the same seller. Combined with the chain’s slow confirmation times, that makes trading the fork coin both confusing and risky.