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BIP-110 fork trails Bitcoin's main chain by 18 blocks
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BIP-110 fork trails Bitcoin's main chain by 18 blocks

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  • Bitcoin's (CRYPTO:BTC) dominant chain has moved significantly ahead of the BIP-110 minority fork, with the breakaway chain now trailing by 18 blocks following the contested signalling point at block 961632.
  • Mining pool Antpool won the race for block 961632 on the dominant Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) chain, whilst BIP-110-supporting outfit Roughnecks' competing version of the same block remained stranded on the minority fork.
  • Roughnecks has since mined two consecutive blocks on the breakaway chain at heights 961632 and 961633, with the mining group describing the effort as "wildcatting" in a reference to high-risk prospecting in unproven territory.

Bitcoin's mining difficulty adjusted upward to 127.48 trillion at block 961632, the same height at which the chain split, placing significant computational strain on the BIP-110 minority fork which retains only a fraction of the dominant chain's hashrate.

"PSA: If you haven't upgraded to Bitcoin Knots 29.3.knots20260508 (or 29.4) yet, you are now vulnerable to double-spending attacks aided by Foundry and Antpool. Upgrade ASAP to avoid accepting counterfeit bitcoins,"

Bitcoin Knots creator Luke Dashjr said.

"The Bitcoin network is currently under attack from hostile miners,"

Dathon Ohm, the anonymous architect behind BIP-110, said.

Simple Mining, an Iowa-based hosting company that directs hashrate towards Ocean Mining, mined block 961634 on the dominant chain, signalling that Ocean-linked hashrate is not uniformly supporting the BIP-110 minority fork despite Ocean's close ties to the proposal.

Ocean Mining's chief technology officer is Luke Dashjr, who has been a leading proponent of the BIP-110 proposal, making Simple Mining's dominant-chain block particularly notable given the pool's affiliation.

BIP-110 supporters responded to the outcome with significant frustration, with some acknowledging that overtaking the dominant chain would now require an extraordinary reversal of fortune.

"RIP Bitcoin. You just became only another captured speculative asset. Sorry Satoshi, we failed you,"

X user BTCbello said.

Some BIP-110 advocates have indicated openness to changing the minority chain's proof-of-work mining algorithm, framing a potential algorithm switch as an opportunity to restart with greater decentralisation.

Unless substantially more hashrate joins the BIP-110 minority fork, blocks on the breakaway chain are expected to arrive at increasingly slow intervals, as the difficulty adjustment mechanism does not reduce in response to declining miner participation until the next scheduled adjustment point.

At the time of reporting, Bitcoin price was $64,923.62.

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