Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 (BIP-110), the “Reduced Data Temporary Softfork,” tried to force a consensus fight over Ordinals-style data on Saturday. Nodes enforcing the BIP began rejecting blocks that did not signal for it at height 961,632. The breakaway path mined only two blocks in roughly eight hours, then stalled while the main Bitcoin chain kept its usual ~10-minute cadence. Spot Bitcoin was about $64,860 (about +0.1% over 24 hours) as of our market snapshot at .
That is the clean read for traders: a soft-fork campaign with a low signaling bar still failed the hashrate test. The specification lives in the BIP repository. The weekend outcome shows how little miner support the proposal actually had once mandatory signaling began.
Price barely flinched. The story is consensus mechanics, not a new range break.
What happened
BIP-110 is titled “Reduced Data Temporary Softfork.” Status in the BIP text is Complete. Author Dathon Ohm frames it as a one-year, consensus-level limit on large data fields so Bitcoin stays focused on money rather than arbitrary payloads. The BIP lists rules that shrink large scriptPubKeys, clamp OP_RETURN-style data toward an 83-byte limit, block oversized witness pushes, and block several Taproot paths used for bulky inscriptions. Pre-activation UTXOs are grandfathered, so older coins stay spendable under prior rules during the temporary window.
Deployment parameters in the same BIP matter for what just played out. The proposal uses a modified BIP9 path named reduced_data on bit 4, with a 55% threshold (1,109 of 2,016 blocks) instead of the classic 95%. It also defines a mandatory signaling window and a max activation height around block 965,664 (~September 1, 2026 in the BIP’s own notes), plus an active duration of 52,416 blocks (~one year) before the rules expire. The discussion thread linked from the BIP header is on the bitcoindev mailing list.
According to Decrypt’s August 9 report, BIP-110 nodes started rejecting non-signaling blocks at height 961,632 on Saturday. An AntPool block without the signal stayed on the main chain. Ocean produced the alternate block the minority path followed. Decrypt says the minority chain mined only two blocks in about eight hours, then fell dozens of blocks behind. Roughly 2.53% of recent blocks had been signaling for the proposal, far under the BIP’s 55% bar. With mainnet difficulty inherited and almost no hashrate, Decrypt estimated on the order of 350 days to the next difficulty retarget on that path, versus about two weeks on Bitcoin proper. Strategy’s Michael Saylor publicly called the result decisive, citing about 99.85% of hashrate staying with Bitcoin and the BIP-110 branch more than 80 blocks behind after those two blocks.
None of that required a panic print in spot. Coinbase’s BTC-USD 24-hour stats around the same window showed last near $64,992, with a high of $65,426 and a low of $64,675, and about 2,913 BTC of venue volume (Coinbase Exchange stats API, read 2026-08-10T00:12:32Z). One-percent book depth on Coinbase was about $14.0M on the bid and $16.3M on the ask at mid ~$65,153 when we pulled the level-2 book at 2026-08-10T00:12:32Z. That is quiet structure for a consensus headline.
Context
BIP-110’s motivation section says inscriptions since 2022 created “unnecessary burdens” for node operators and pulled incentives away from Bitcoin as money. The temporary soft fork tries to invalidate contiguous arbitrary data larger than 256 bytes and related large script forms while claiming to preserve known monetary use cases. That is a values fight dressed as a technical BIP: one side wants consensus to shrink non-financial payloads; the other side says paying for block space is enough, and miner/node filtering of content looks like censorship.
The lowered 55% threshold was supposed to make urgency easier. It also made a minority-enforcement split more tempting if signaling stayed soft. Once mandatory signaling began, non-signaling mainnet blocks simply forked BIP-110 nodes onto a thin chain. Difficulty does not care about politics. A chain with ~2.5% hashrate cannot keep a 10-minute clock at mainnet difficulty. That is why the minority path “sputtered” instead of racing toward activation height 965,664.
Replay risk is the ugly footnote for anyone tempted to treat minority coins as free money. Decrypt notes both chains accept identical transaction formats, so a sale on the minority chain can be replayed onto Bitcoin. Until tooling and caution catch up, that is a trap for careless traders, not a second liquid market.
For longer Bitcoin cycle context, see our Bitcoin history page. For how hashrate and chain security fit together in plain English, start with proof of work. Venue and book behavior still sit under liquidity and our market analysis desk. If you are sorting BIP claims from timeline noise, how to follow crypto news without getting played is the checklist we use in-house.
Our read
Stance: BIP-110 lost the only vote that settles soft forks: sustained hashrate on a live tip. A polished BIP text and a 55% threshold do not replace miners who keep building on the blocks everyone else accepts. Bitcoin’s spot tape treated the episode as governance theater, which matches the calm Coinbase depth we measured overnight.
I am not arguing inscriptions are free of trade-offs. Node operators feel real cost when arbitrary data becomes common. The falsifiable claim is narrower: the BIP-110 minority chain will not catch mainnet or lock in under the BIP’s 55% path before the mandatory signaling window’s upper bound near block 963,647; mainnet Bitcoin will remain the sole liquid settlement chain for BTC spot through that window. If Ocean-scale (or larger) pools suddenly put majority hashrate behind bit 4 and the minority tip closes the dozens-of-blocks gap with continuous block production, this read is wrong.
Until that happens, treat BIP-110 coins and “anti-spam chain” branding as non-market. The range around the mid-$60,000s is still the price story. The fork is a hashrate story that already printed its answer.
What to watch next
- Signaling share on mainnet bit 4 through the rest of the mandatory window. If it stays near the ~2.5% Decrypt cited, the BIP’s activation math is dead for this cycle.
- Minority tip lag versus mainnet height. Two blocks then silence is a stall; a sudden burst of blocks would be the first reason to revisit the claim.
- Spot depth and ETF flow prints on quiet days. A real regime change shows up in books and flows, not in mailing-list volume. Farside was unreachable this hour, so we lean on Coinbase depth and the desk snapshot until flows load again.
- Client and pool statements that clarify default policy versus consensus enforcement. Policy filters can shrink spam without a soft fork. Consensus changes that fail still leave social scar tissue.
Bottom line for the desk: BIP-110 put a temporary data clamp on paper, then put a minority chain on the field, then lost hashrate immediately. Bitcoin near $64,860 did not need a new narrative. It needed the main chain tip, and it kept it.