Miner support for BIP-110 has barely cleared 2.5%. The threshold it needs is 55%.
That gap is the whole story of what started at roughly 19:35 UTC Saturday, when Bitcoin reached block 961,632 and the mandatory signaling period for BIP-110 finally began. The proposal is meant to temporarily curb non-financial data from being embedded on the network. On the evidence of the first blocks, the people running the hash power aren’t interested.
They’re not alone. Strategy chairman Michael Saylor and Blockstream CEO Adam Back have both come out against the proposal, which is about as close as Bitcoin gets to an establishment position.
The miners get a vote, and then they don’t
Here’s where BIP-110 stops behaving like a normal soft fork. Its backers are pushing it as a user-activated soft fork, a UASF, which shifts the decision from miners to node operators.
The mechanics are blunt. You update your node software so it rejects any block from a miner that fails to signal support for BIP-110. Miners either fall into line or get cut off.
Supporters point to 2017 for precedent. SegWit activated through BIP-148 under the same logic, separating digital signatures from transaction data, and it went through despite not having the required miner support. Users forced it.
That’s a real precedent. It’s also one data point.
What you’re actually rejecting if you run the software
Strip away the governance argument and the immediate effect of adopting BIP-110 is simple: your node rejects the network that nearly the entire mining sector is building.
Which opens the door to two competing Bitcoin networks running at once. On one side, the dominant mainnet with the vast majority of hash power and institutional capital behind it. On the other, a minority chain populated exclusively by nodes enforcing BIP-110.
Two outcomes from there. The breakaway chain gains node operators, grows in prominence and forces the mining sector’s hand. Or it grinds to a halt for lack of support.
Four weeks on the clock
The signaling window runs until block 965,664, expected in about four weeks.
That’s 4,032 blocks from where this started, and the current numbers don’t leave much room for interpretation. Going from 2.5% to 55% in that span would require most of the mining industry to reverse itself in under a month, and nothing in the public statements from the loudest names in Bitcoin suggests that’s coming.
So the interesting question isn’t whether BIP-110 hits its threshold through miner signaling. It’s how many node operators decide to run the UASF software anyway, and whether that number is large enough to make anyone in mining nervous.
Elsewhere in privacy coins
Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.
If you’re running a node and you’re tempted, understand what you’re signing up for before block 965,664 arrives. Rejecting 97.5% of the network’s hash power isn’t a protest vote you can take back at the next block.
