Bitcoin’s BIP-110 fork is 300 blocks behind BTC and six years from fixing itself

TechBitcoin’s BIP-110 fork is 300 blocks behind BTC and six years from fixing itselfThe breakaway chain has produced two blocks since splitting off on Saturday. Bitcoin has produced more than 300 in the same stretch.By Shaurya Malwa33 min ago2 min readMake preferred on ShareShare this articleCopy linkX iconX (Twitter)LinkedInFacebookEmailMake preferred on SummaryShowA proposed Bitcoin rule change known as BIP-110 triggered a chain split on Saturday, but the breakaway chain has produced only two blocks and has since stalled.Because the forked chain inherited Bitcoin’s high mining difficulty while its coin has no market value, miners have little incentive to support it, leaving it 326 blocks behind the main network.The forked chain cannot lower its mining difficulty until it reaches 2,016 blocks, a milestone now estimated to be more than six years away, though some observers caution it is too early to declare the effort a failure.A breakaway bitcoin chain is now so short of miners that its own mechanism for fixing that is six years away.The chain that broke away from bitcoin on Saturday has not moved since. It is still sitting on block 961,633, its second. Bitcoin has since climbed to block 961,959, leaving the fork 326 blocks behind.The split happened because of a proposal called BIP-110, which would stop people storing pictures, text and other non-payment data in bitcoin transactions for a year. Changing bitcoin's rules requires miners to agree, and they register that agreement by marking the blocks they produce. BIP-110 needed 55% of blocks over a two-week stretch. It got about 2.6% at its peak.But rather than accept that, the proposal had a second route built into it. At block 961,632, computers running BIP-110 software began rejecting every block that did not carry the mark, regardless of what miners had decided. Almost no blocks carry it, so those computers rejected the chain nearly all of bitcoin's mining power was building and started following one made onl…

Bitcoin’s BIP-110 fork is 300 blocks behind BTC and six years from fixing itself

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