For roughly seventeen years, Bitcoin has settled its most important disputes with an extraordinarily simple rule.

You can argue.

You can write code.

You can run whatever node software you want.

You can announce that your rules represent the “real Bitcoin.”

But eventually somebody has to mine the next block.

That is where BIP-110 ran into reality.

The controversial Reduced Data Temporary Softfork finally reached its mandatory-signaling phase around block 961,632 in early August 2026. Nodes enforcing BIP-110 began rejecting blocks that did not signal support for the proposal. The intention was clear : force a confrontation between miners unwilling to adopt the new rules and users determined to enforce them.

A confrontation happened. It just didn’t happen the way supporters hoped.

A small mining operation called Roughnecks produced the first blocks on the BIP-110 branch.

Then the chain essentially stopped.

Two blocks. That was the rebellion. Meanwhile, Bitcoin kept moving.

And almost immediately, the debate changed from whether BIP-110 could become Bitcoin to whether its supporters should change Bitcoin’s proof-of-work algorithm entirely.

Roughnecks has since publicly said that what comes next is a proof-of-work change. Dathon Ohm, one of BIP-110’s proponents, wrote that supporters were working on a proposal to change proof-of-work and “fire the miners.”

That is not a minor adjustment.

It changes the nature of the fight.

BIP-110 began as a battle over arbitrary data. It became a battle over who sets Bitcoin’s rules.

Now it is becoming a battle over what Bitcoin actually is.

BIP-110 Lost the First Battle in Two Blocks

The original BIP-110 proposal was already unusually aggressive.

Its goal was to restrict several techniques used to embed arbitrary data in Bitcoin transactions. Among other changes, it proposed consensus limits affecting large data pushes, script formats, and OP_RETURN outputs, while arguing that Bitcoin should remain focused primarily on becoming censorship-resistant money rather than a generalized data-storage network.

You can agree with that philosophy.

You can hate it. That isn’t the most interesting part anymore. The interesting part was the activation strategy.

BIP-110 wasn’t simply asking developers to merge restrictions into Bitcoin Core and hope everybody upgraded.

Its supporters were prepared to enforce the rules themselves.

That is a very Bitcoin idea.

Your node decides what it considers valid.

Nobody can force your node to accept a block that violates its rules.

If enough economically meaningful users enforce the same stricter rules, miners theoretically face a choice : produce blocks acceptable to those users or risk mining coins those users refuse to recognize.

That is the logic behind a user-activated soft fork.

The concept has historical credibility.

But BIP-110 attempted something much more contentious.

The proposal’s activation design included a 55% miner-signaling path and a user-enforced fallback. Once mandatory signaling began, BIP-110 nodes could reject otherwise-valid Bitcoin blocks that failed to signal.

This created the possibility of a genuine chain split.

And that is exactly what appeared.

The problem was hashpower. Bitcoin’s dominant chain had almost all of it. The BIP-110 branch did not.

So while both camps could argue endlessly about legitimacy, ideology, and “the real Bitcoin,” proof-of-work imposed a brutally measurable constraint.

The minority branch needed miners.

It didn’t have enough.

Proof-of-Work Doesn’t Care About Your Node Count

This is one of the most important lessons from the entire episode.

Bitcoiners often repeat the phrase :

Users set the rules. That is broadly true. But it is incomplete.

Users decide which consensus rules their nodes enforce.

Miners provide the proof-of-work required to advance a blockchain operating under those rules.

Neither role can simply be wished away.

You can run one million nodes enforcing a particular set of rules.

If nobody mines valid blocks under those rules, those million nodes can spend eternity agreeing perfectly about a blockchain that never moves.

Consensus without production is paralysis.

Mining without economic acceptance is equally useless.

A miner can produce an unlimited stream of blocks that nobody considers valuable.

Bitcoin works because these incentives normally converge.

Miners produce blocks.

Nodes validate them.

Markets assign value to the resulting coins.

Businesses accept them.

Wallets recognize them.

Exchanges trade them.

Developers maintain compatible software.

Bitcoin’s genius is that no single constituency controls all of those layers.

But decentralization does not mean every constituency can unilaterally override the others without consequences.

BIP-110 just demonstrated that distinction in spectacular fashion.