BIP-110 Heads Into August With Less Than 1% Miner Support
BIP-110, the proposed temporary Bitcoin data-restriction softfork, is approaching a mandatory miner-signaling window projected around August 7 with less than 1% of hashrate behind it and no major mining pool committed.
A Bitcoin softfork proposal to restrict non-financial on-chain data is approaching a potential chain-split event with almost no miner support behind it.
Key takeaways
- BIP-110's mandatory miner-signaling window is projected to open at block 961,632 (approximately August 7), with current signaling below 1% of Bitcoin's hashrate, per live monitoring at bip110.org/monitor.
- No major mining pool beyond Ocean has signaled support; Bitcoin Core has not merged the implementation; the 55% threshold required for activation falls orders of magnitude beyond current pace.
- Nodes verify and enforce Bitcoin's rules but do not produce blocks. Without miner and economic majority, BIP-110-enforcing nodes running Bitcoin Knots variants will land on a minority chain, not change the main one.
BIP-110, formally titled the "Reduced Data Temporary Softfork" and listed in the BIPs repository under pseudonymous developer Dathon Ohm, proposes a one-year temporary consensus change that would restrict arbitrary non-financial data embedded in Bitcoin transactions. The mandatory signaling window is a hard deadline: when it opens, BIP-110-enforcing nodes reject non-signaling blocks as invalid. With signaling stuck below 1% of hashrate, that means those nodes go onto a minority chain, not the other way around.
What the Numbers Actually Say
The live monitor puts current miner signaling at approximately 0.83 to 0.86% of blocks. In raw terms: roughly 5 exahashes per second out of a network running approximately 940 EH/s as of late June 2026 data (figures change with difficulty; verify current total at publish time). The first signaling block was mined by Barefoot Mining via Ocean pool on March 1, 2026. Since May 1, approximately 38 signaling blocks have been mined out of more than 9,000 total, around 0.42% over that window.
BIP-110 uses a modified BIP9 signaling mechanism requiring 55% of blocks per difficulty period (1,109 out of 2,016) to lock in, well below the traditional 95% threshold but still representing a number the proposal is nowhere near. Lock-in is projected at block 963,648; activation is projected at block 965,664, roughly September 1. All those dates are block-time projections and will shift with hashrate.
Bitcoin Core has not merged the implementation. No major pool beyond Ocean has signaled.
The node count tells a different part of the story. Bitcoin Knots nodes represent a meaningful share of the reachable network (Coin Dance data from late June placed it around 22% of roughly 23,795 nodes; this figure changes daily and should be refreshed at publish time). That's a genuine constituency. The problem is that running a node does not produce blocks.
Why "Proof of Node" Doesn't Move Hashrate
BIP-110 has attracted real energy from the Knots community, heavily populated by Bitcoiners running sovereign infrastructure on Start9 and Umbrel. The complaint driving the movement is legitimate: non-monetary data is being embedded in Bitcoin transactions, and a segment of the developer and user community finds that objectionable. The theory of change is where the logic breaks down.
Supporters, including Bitcoin author and podcaster Knut Svanholm, have argued that node operators alone can force a consensus change. Svanholm posted on X that every person on Earth functions as a node in the Bitcoin network, and that influence over the network flows from the choices individuals make about which tools they run. That framing is philosophically interesting and technically wrong.
Full nodes verify transactions and enforce consensus rules. They relay transactions. If a miner is connected, a node can influence which transactions get included in a template. What a node cannot do is produce a block. The proof-of-work race belongs to miners. Without their hash power, a UASF minority produces a minority chain.
The 2017 UASF (BIP148) gets invoked frequently as proof that nodes can force miners. The lesson drawn is too narrow. BIP148 succeeded because major exchanges, wallet providers, and enough of the economic majority aligned with it to make the UASF chain the one that mattered.
BIP-110 currently has none of that: no major exchange committed, no Core merge, and miner support below 1%. Applying the 2017 playbook to a 2026 situation with a far smaller coalition is a governance error with a real cost.
This connects directly to the ongoing debates around Bitcoin relay policy and what constitutes valid transaction data, and through which mechanism those rules get set. BIP-110 is one answer to that question. The problem isn't the question, it's that the proposed mechanism requires miner buy-in the proposal doesn't have.
Bitcoin's Conservatism Is Load-Bearing
The more important takeaway is structural. A passionate, technically capable, node-running community with a genuine grievance still cannot move Bitcoin's consensus rules without miner and economic majority alignment. That property is the same one that prevents any other constituency, including corporate miners, large exchanges, or government actors, from unilaterally imposing changes.
Michael Saylor posted on X on July 15, 2026, calling BIP-110 a "Bitcoin Iatrogenic Proposal", the implication being that the cure may be worse than the disease. The hashrate concentration picture adds another layer: as of a June 23, 2026 snapshot from miningpoolstats.stream, four pools, Foundry Digital, AntPool, ViaBTC, and F2Pool, collectively controlled over 70% of Bitcoin's network hashrate. Without movement from at least two or three of them, no UASF-style push reaches 55%.
The falsifiable thesis: BIP-110 will not change Bitcoin's consensus rules. The mandatory signaling window will open around August 7, produce a short-lived minority chain among Knots nodes, and the proposal's rules will expire automatically after roughly 52,416 blocks without activating. The trigger that makes this thesis wrong is straightforward: if two or more major mining pools representing a combined 55% or more of network hashrate begin signaling before block 961,632, the analysis changes entirely and a live network-splitting event becomes plausible. Watch bip110.org/monitor closely.
What to Watch in August
If BIP-110 signaling remains below 5% heading into block 961,632, the mandatory window becomes a brief network anomaly rather than a fork. But Bitcoiners running BIP-110-enforcing versions of Knots should understand their node's position during that window: it will be treating most new blocks as invalid. Balances on the main chain are not at risk, but the node's view of the chain tip will diverge temporarily. Know your software and what consensus rules it enforces.
The technical debate on the Bitcoin-Dev mailing list at the bitcoin-dev group has been ongoing since the proposal was assigned its number on December 3, 2025. That is where the substantive engineering objections live. The social media layer has been louder and less precise.
Sources
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Full nodes verify Bitcoin's transaction history and enforce consensus rules, but they do not produce blocks.
Without miners directing hash power to the BIP-110 chain, enforcing nodes reject the majority chain's blocks during the mandatory window, effectively putting themselves on a minority fork rather than changing the main chain. The economic weight of exchanges, wallets, and users has to align too, as it did in 2017. That alignment is absent here.
If you run a BIP-110-enforcing version of Knots, your node may treat non-signaling blocks as invalid during the window spanning blocks 961,632 through 963,647. With under 1% of miners signaling, the vast majority of new blocks will be from non-signaling miners, meaning your node's view of the chain tip will temporarily diverge from the main chain. Your coins on the main chain are not at risk, but your node will not track it correctly during that period.
BIP148 had alignment from major exchanges, wallet providers, and enough of the economic majority to make the UASF chain the dominant one. Miners moved. BIP-110 has none of that: no major exchange has committed, Bitcoin Core hasn't merged it, and miner support is below 1%. The 2017 UASF succeeded because of broad economic alignment, not node signaling alone.
