The BIP-110 Bitcoin Chain Split Just Happened, The Rebels Got Stranded

Bitcoin (BTC) nodes supporting the contested BIP-110 proposal have officially diverged from the canonical chain.

BIP-110 nodes are stranded at block 961,631 while the rest of the network has continued producing new blocks.

Jameson Lopp confirmed the chain tip divergence in a post on August 8, linking to a live tracking dashboard showing the split in real time.

What BIP-110 Proposed

BIP-110 was a contested Bitcoin Improvement Proposal that sought to impose temporary restrictions on certain block contents.

Proponents argued the change would address concerns about non-financial data being embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain, a practice that has grown substantially with the rise of Ordinals inscriptions and BRC-20 token activity.

The proposal was contentious from the outset. Critics argued it represented a deviation from Bitcoin’s permissionless data model.

Supporters, primarily clustered around mining operation OCEAN Mining, contended the restriction was a legitimate use of Bitcoin’s soft fork process.

The mechanism BIP-110 relied on required a supermajority of mining hash rate to signal support within a defined window. That threshold was not reached.

The result is that nodes configured to enforce BIP-110 rules now reject blocks that non-BIP-110 nodes accept, creating a de facto chain split.

The Bitcoin Chain Split In Practice

The chain divergence does not represent a new coin or a persistent competing blockchain in the way the 2017 Bitcoin Cash fork did. BIP-110 nodes lack the hash rate to sustain an independent chain with meaningful security. The stranded nodes are effectively isolated.

Lopp said in a separate post that the episode represents a practical failure for BIP-110 advocates. He noted that BIP-110 supporters declined to put their own Bitcoin into any economic structure that would have created financial stakes for the proposal. Without that commitment, the fork carries no economic weight.

He also commented on the employees at OCEAN Mining, the pool most publicly associated with BIP-110, describing an awkward internal environment as the proposal’s collapse became visible on-chain.

Security researcher Taylor Monahan added to the commentary in a post, questioning the strategic logic of running a chain that accepted all blocks while also expecting the non-accepting chain to capitulate.

BIP-110 Reopens Bitcoin’s Data Neutrality Fight

BIP-110 had been debated in Bitcoin developer circles for several months before reaching this activation window. The proposal drew support from operators who objected to the volume of non-financial data entering the blockchain.

Critics included prominent Bitcoin developers who argued the change set a precedent for restricting permissionless data access.

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The dispute reflects a longer-running tension in Bitcoin’s community between those who want the base layer to remain a neutral settlement network and those who want active maintenance of the chain’s character as a monetary instrument.

Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens reignited that debate in 2023 and 2024. BIP-110 was one formal response to that renewed tension.

Lopp referenced his own experience during the 2017 SegWit2X dispute while at BitGo in an earlier post, drawing a parallel between the internal divisions that accompanied that episode and the current situation at OCEAN Mining.

What Comes Next

BIP-110 nodes will remain stranded unless their operators reconfigure to follow the canonical chain. That reconfiguration requires updating node software to drop the BIP-110 enforcement rule.

Most operators are expected to make that change quickly, as running an isolated minority chain carries no benefit.

OCEAN Mining has not published a formal statement on the chain split as of this report. The pool’s next steps will determine whether the BIP-110 effort is formally abandoned or whether proponents attempt to regroup around a revised proposal.

For the broader Bitcoin network, the episode has no impact on consensus, security, or transaction finality. The canonical chain has continued without interruption. The split is a software incident affecting a minority of nodes rather than a threat to network integrity.