Summary
- A Bitcoin fork stemming from BIP-110 was created at block 961,632 but managed to mine only two blocks before stalling, significantly lagging behind the main network.
- This fork inherited Bitcoin's difficulty adjustment but had minimal hashpower, with only about 2.53% of recent blocks supporting it, far below the 55% needed for activation.
- Critics warn that BIP-110, which sought to limit non-financial data transactions, could set a concerning precedent for censorship within the network.
A contentious proposal within the Bitcoin community has led to a fork that quickly faltered, mining just two blocks in approximately eight hours before stalling. This event occurred in response to Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-110, which aimed to prevent non-financial data from being included in transactions.
The split at block 961,632 saw nodes utilizing BIP-110 software reject blocks that did not align with its parameters, creating a significant gap as the main Bitcoin network continued its regular block production. A block mined by AntPool was accepted by the main network while a miner from Ocean pool initiated the minority chain by mining a block for BIP-110.
As time progressed, the new chain fell further behind, trailing by dozens of blocks due to a mining difficulty adjustment issue. The fork inherited Bitcoin's existing difficulty settings but only garnered support from about 2.53% of recent blocks, well below the necessary threshold for successful activation without a split. At its current mining rate, the fork would take nearly a year to adjust its difficulty settings, leading to block intervals of several hours compared to Bitcoin's ten-minute average.
