Bitcoin has just witnessed one of the most dramatic—and shortest—chain splits in recent memory.

The controversial BIP-110 fork has effectively stalled after producing only two blocks.

And the reason is brutally simple: it did not have enough mining power.

The Fork That Couldn’t Keep Up

The split occurred at Bitcoin block 961,632, when nodes enforcing BIP-110 began rejecting blocks that did not signal support for the proposal.

The result was a minority chain running under different consensus rules.

But there was a problem.

BIP-110 inherited Bitcoin’s mining difficulty while having only a tiny fraction of Bitcoin’s total hash rate.

The new chain managed to produce block 961,632 and then 961,633.

After that, it essentially stopped.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s main chain continued producing blocks normally and quickly pulled dozens of blocks ahead.

This is the fundamental weakness of a minority proof-of-work chain: the difficulty does not magically become easier just because most miners leave.

Without enough hash power, blocks become extremely slow to find.

Why Did BIP-110 Exist?

BIP-110 was created to address one of Bitcoin’s biggest philosophical battles: what should Bitcoin block space actually be used for?

Its supporters want to limit the amount of arbitrary data that can be embedded in Bitcoin transactions.

The argument is that Bitcoin should primarily remain a monetary network rather than becoming a permanent data-storage system for images, text and other non-financial content.

The proposal specifically targets practices that became increasingly popular after Ordinals and similar protocols.

According to BIP-110's own documentation, the goal is to temporarily restrict arbitrary data while preserving Bitcoin's monetary use cases.

But not everyone agrees.

Critics argue that if users pay the required transaction fees, they should be free to use the block space they are purchasing.

And, ultimately, miners have demonstrated which side they currently prefer.

The Numbers Tell the Story

The lack of miner support was already obvious before the split.

Only around 2.5% of blocks were signaling support for BIP-110 during the preceding period—far below the roughly 55% threshold associated with avoiding a contentious chain split.

That made the outcome almost inevitable.

A blockchain can have passionate developers, node operators and supporters.

But a proof-of-work chain also needs something else:

Hash power.

Without it, even technically valid blocks can arrive far too slowly to compete with the main network.

Is BIP-110 Dead?

Not necessarily in the philosophical sense.

The debate over Bitcoin’s purpose is far from over.

But as a competing proof-of-work chain, the first attempt has suffered a devastating setback.

Two blocks.

Then silence.

For me, this is the most interesting lesson from the entire episode:

Bitcoin consensus isn't controlled by one group alone.

Developers can write rules.
Node operators can enforce them.
Users can support them.

But when a chain requires proof-of-work, miners ultimately determine whether that chain can actually survive in the real world.

And right now, the Bitcoin mainnet has made its choice very clear. ⚡

The BIP-110 experiment wanted to change how Bitcoin uses its block space.

Instead, it may have just demonstrated how difficult it is to split Bitcoin without the hash power to back it up.