Bitcoin Community Divided as BIP-110 Advances to Complete Status With August Activation Looming
On June 30, 2026, Dathon Ohm, the author of BIP-110, announced that the proposal has been advanced to Complete status, the technical designation in the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal process indicating the specification is fully drafted and ready for formal review. Ohm thanked contributors jonatack, murchandamus, and Luke Dashjr, along with others across Bitcoin’s technical community who helped shape the proposal into its final form. The announcement landed just weeks before the most consequential deadline in BIP-110’s timeline.
BIP-110, formally titled the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork, proposes a one-year consensus-level restriction on arbitrary data embedding in Bitcoin transactions, targeting the methods most commonly used for Ordinals inscriptions, BRC-20 tokens, Runes, and large OP_RETURN payloads. Standard monetary transactions remain fully valid. After approximately 52,416 blocks, roughly one year, the restrictions expire automatically unless a follow-on proposal extends them.
The Numbers Behind the Division
Miner signaling for BIP-110 stood at approximately 0.31% of total hashrate as of late June 2026, around 5 exahashes per second out of a network total near 940 EH/s. The proposal requires 55% miner signaling within a retarget period for early lock-in. If that threshold is not met, a mandatory signaling window beginning around block 961,632, projected for August 7, 2026, will cause nodes running BIP-110-compatible software to reject any block that does not signal support.
Ocean Pool has produced the majority of signaling blocks since the first appeared in March 2026. No major mining pool including Foundry USA, Antpool, ViaBTC, or F2Pool has publicly committed to signaling. Node adoption for BIP-110-capable software sits between an estimated 2% and 8% of listening nodes, primarily Bitcoin Knots variants, though figures are disputed.
The Critics Are Vocal
Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream and one of the few people cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper, has described BIP-110 as an intentional downgrade that disrupts Bitcoin’s user space and could leave certain existing transaction outputs unspendable, effectively locking up funds. Jameson Lopp has echoed these concerns, warning the proposal could break compatibility with existing protocols and scripts. Both have characterised the mandatory enforcement mechanism as reckless given the absence of broad miner consensus.
Why This Matters Beyond the Technical Debate
The stakes differ from earlier Bitcoin fork cycles because Bitcoin is now widely held through spot exchange-traded funds, corporate treasuries, and regulated custody structures. A chain split, even a temporary one, would create uncertainty around which fork represents the real Bitcoin, potentially halting exchange operations, custody services, and payment rails while the dust settles. Miners, node operators, wallet developers, and exchanges across Africa and globally are watching closely as August approaches.