The mandatory-signaling window for BIP-110 opened at block 961,632. Within hours, the Bitcoin network experienced a consensus split. Enforcing nodes produced two blocks—both attributed to OCEAN—then stopped. The dominant proof-of-work chain, with zero version-bit-4 signals among the first 59 blocks, continued advancing. By 06:34 UTC on Aug. 9, the enforcing branch sat 57 blocks behind, its latest block eight hours and 45 minutes old.
This is not a fork fight. It is a miner boycott. The silent kind—no hashrate, no announcements, no drama. Just a two-block orphan chain that will never catch up.
Context: The BIP-110 State Machine
BIP-110 proposes temporary consensus limits on several methods of embedding arbitrary data into Bitcoin transactions. It is a soft fork—backward-compatible for non-enforcing nodes, but enforcing nodes reject blocks that do not set version bit 4 during the signaling window. The threshold is 55% of 2,016 blocks (1,109 signals). Mandatory signaling runs from heights 961,632 through 963,647. If an enforcing chain reaches height 963,648, it enters LOCKED_IN. The restrictions become ACTIVE only after another retarget period, at height 965,664.
The current split occurred during mandatory signaling. The transaction restrictions remain two stages away. But the enforcing chain is already dead.
Core: The Data Speaks
From height 961,632 to 961,690, I examined the block headers of the dominant chain. Zero bit-4 signals. The enforcing branch produced two blocks—heights 961,632 and 961,633—both from OCEAN. Then nothing. The hashpower that created those two blocks either switched off or pointed elsewhere. The dominant chain, meanwhile, continued with blocks from Foundry, F2Pool, AntPool, ViaBTC, and MARA.
This is not a 51% attack. It is a 0.42% signaling rate (since May 1, per BGeometrics) dressed in a two-block orphan. The economic majority—the miners who control the most hashpower—simply refused to participate.
Based on my experience deconstructing DeFi liquidity models during the 2020 summer, I recognize this pattern. The dominant chain has a liquidity advantage: it is the chain where exchanges, wallets, and merchants operate. Coinbase and Kraken reported normal Bitcoin operations. The regulating chain has no economic gravity. It is a ghost fork.
Volatility is the tax on unverified assumptions. Many assumed that BIP-110, being a ‘spam filter,’ would attract support from miners who value block space efficiency. But miners are not altruists. They are profit maximizers. The assumption that they would signal for a soft fork that reduces their fee revenue (by restricting data-carrying transactions) ignored the incentive structure. The data now shows miners are voting with their hashrate: not signaling.
Contrarian: The Fork That Isn’t
The conventional narrative is that BIP-110 is a ‘contentious fork’ between purists and realists. Purists want Bitcoin to stay money-only; realists accept that arbitrary data is a feature, not a bug. But the on-chain evidence suggests something subtler: the fork is not contentious because it is irrelevant. The enforcing chain has no economic support. It is a theoretical debate made manifest in a two-block orphan.
Code executes logic; humans execute fear. The code of BIP-110 is logical: reject blocks without version bit 4. But the humans who control the hashpower executed fear—fear of losing fee revenue, fear of alienating users who rely on ordinals or inscriptions, fear of a chain split that could damage Bitcoin’s value proposition. The silent boycott is the market’s way of saying: the cost of this fork exceeds the benefit.
This is where my experience with the 2022 Terra/Luna collapse becomes relevant. I analyzed the monetary policy flaws of UST before it collapsed. The same pattern emerges here: a design that assumes protocol participants will act in a certain way, ignoring the economic incentives that drive their actual behavior. UST assumed that arbitrageurs would keep the peg; BIP-110 assumes that miners will signal for a rule that reduces their income. Both assumptions were unverified—and both were wrong.
Takeaway: The Real Story Is the Absence of Support
The mandatory-signaling window still has 1,957 blocks remaining. Could a major pool suddenly switch to signaling? Technically, yes. But the zero-of-59 result is not a fluke—it is a statement. The dominant chain has no incentive to signal. The enforcing chain cannot sustain itself.
The curve bends, but it doesn’t break. Bitcoin’s governance process is messy. Soft forks that lack economic consensus die quietly. BIP-110 will likely fade into a footnote, remembered only as the proposal that produced a two-block orphan. But the lesson is permanent: code is not law; hashpower is. And hashrate votes with its wallet.
For readers holding Bitcoin, the immediate risk is low. Exchange feeds show normal operations. But the deeper narrative is about Bitcoin’s neutrality. Can a protocol that filters certain transactions remain neutral? Or is any filter a form of censorship? The silent boycott didn’t answer that question—it just postponed it. The next contentious proposal may not be so easily ignored.
