The fork nobody is mining

Near-Zero Support as the Deadline Arrives

Bitcoin's most contentious governance fight of 2026 is heading toward a quiet resolution, just not the one its backers hoped for. BIP-110, formally titled the Reduced Data Temporary Soft Fork, reaches its mandatory signaling window around August 7 with miner support sitting at zero in the current difficulty period. Cumulative backing has never broken 1% of hashrate since May. The 0.31% figure translates to roughly 5 EH/s out of a total network hashrate of approximately 940 EH/s. No major mining pool has joined the effort.

The proposal would tighten limits on OP_RETURN and other data-carrying methods for one year, a move backers say would refocus Bitcoin on payments but critics argue improperly censors valid, fee-paying transactions. Originally introduced as BIP-444 in October 2025 before being formally reassigned, it was designed as a temporary measure giving Bitcoin a trial period of tighter restrictions on data usage. Node adoption sits in the low single digits, carried almost entirely by Bitcoin Knots. Bitcoin Core has not endorsed the proposal and the submitted implementation has not been merged.

High-Profile Opposition and What Happens Next

Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and Blockstream CEO Adam Back both publicly opposed BIP-110, arguing that its temporary transaction restrictions could weaken Bitcoin's neutral settlement rules and damage network credibility. Saylor said BIP-110 converted a spam dispute into a consensus intervention affecting valid, fee-paying transactions, and warned that the precedent could present a greater danger than blockchain spam itself. Jameson Lopp has also voiced opposition to the proposal. Adam Back was more direct, stating that Bitcoin respectfully says no, and stressing that protocol changes should only be adopted with broad technical consensus.

BIP-110 does not rely on the usual path of overwhelming miner approval. Instead it uses a user-activated soft fork mechanism in which nodes enforce a rule whether or not miners agree, set to a 55% miner-signaling threshold rather than the traditional 95%. The inscription economy that BIP-110 targets, including Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens, has become a meaningful source of miner fee revenue, which helps explain why pools have shown little appetite for a proposal that would shrink their income.

If, after the mandatory window opens, nodes running BIP-110 begin rejecting non-compliant blocks and the majority of the network does not follow, the result is not a Bitcoin upgrade but a separate minority chain. The rules would expire automatically roughly one year after activation. With the numbers where they stand, BIP-110 is not changing $BTC. It is simply moving its enforcers onto a chain of their own.

Sources:
CoinDesk: Bitcoin's BIP-110 Fork Deadline Nears With Miner Support at Zero
Crypto Briefing: Bitcoin Community Divided Over BIP-110 Ahead of Activation Deadline
TFTC: BIP-110 Heads Into August Deadline With Miner Support at Zero