On August 10, Luke Dashjr, long-time editor of Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) and co-founder and CTO of Ocean Pool, was removed from the editor team and lost his editing privileges by his peers for bypassing the discussion process by prematurely assigning a number to BIP-110 and for having made minimal contributions to editorial work in recent years.
The trigger for this disciplinary action was the first true chain split in the Bitcoin network since the Bitcoin Cash hard fork in 2017, which occurred several days ago. On August 8, the Bitcoin network split at block height 961,632: some nodes refused to follow the main chain and instead insisted on enforcing BIP-110, a soft fork proposal prohibiting the inclusion of non-transfer data in transactions, which Luke had deeply contributed to drafting. The minority chain stalled after adding just one more block, while the main chain continued operating normally and quickly pulled ahead by dozens of blocks.
Who should control the accounting space?
A new Bitcoin block is added approximately every ten minutes, bundling transaction records from a given time period. Once full, miners verify and link it to the previous block. While blocks primarily contain transaction data, the protocol does not prohibit including text, images, or even code—as long as users are willing to pay for the space.
The conflict began with the release of Bitcoin Core version 30 in October 2025, the most widely used node software on the Bitcoin network, which removed the 83-byte limit on the 'OP_RETURN' field used for embedding additional data. This limit had merely been a software default recommendation; its removal significantly reduced the cost of embedding non-transactional data.
However, some community members disagreed with this relaxation and instead ran an alternative software, Bitcoin Knots, which is free and open-source but retains the old restrictions. Its user share rose from nearly zero at the beginning of 2024 to over 22% within two years.
BIP-110 was proposed in this context, aiming to encode Knots' restrictions into Bitcoin's most fundamental consensus rules, requiring universal adherence. Originally numbered BIP-444, the draft initially included provisions for imposing "legal and moral consequences" on non-compliant parties; following backlash, these were removed, and in December 2025, it was renumbered as BIP-110.
A technical discussion escalated into a power struggle.
Trust with a low entry barrier
For a Bitcoin soft fork to take effect, miners—individuals or organizations that operate specialized equipment to maintain the network’s ledger and earn Bitcoin rewards—must signal their support by including a signaling flag in blocks. The new rules only activate once the proportion of hashing power displaying this signal reaches a predefined threshold. Historically, this threshold has been set at 95%, meaning nearly all miners must agree before the new rules are activated, aiming to prevent network splits.
BIP-110 lowered the threshold to 55% and added a mandatory enforcement clause: even if the support rate is not met, nodes running the patch will automatically reject blocks that violate the new rules.
The threshold can be encoded in the code, but whether miners are willing to comply is not up to the code.
Since entering the voting period on May 1, support has never exceeded 3%; in the final tally period before the mandatory effective deadline, support rose to only about 2.53%.
Mining pools such as Foundry USA and AntPool have not expressed support; nearly all votes in favor came from Ocean Pool and a few independent miners. Wang Chun, co-founder of F2Pool, publicly criticized Luke, accusing him of financial and personal bankruptcy, and sarcastically suggested he switch to another proof-of-work algorithm, as the outcome wouldn’t be any better.
Strategy founder Michael Saylor lists "110 reasons" against it, arguing that once rules can filter transactions based on their content, Bitcoin’s neutrality is compromised. Security expert Jameson Lopp is more direct, calling it "reckless" and "doomed to fail," noting that data can be re-encoded to circumvent restrictions and may render certain transaction outputs permanently unspendable.
A fork that lasted only one block
On August 8, the blockchain reached block height 961,632. Nodes running the BIP-110 patch rejected this block outright because it did not carry the required signal for the new rules, instead producing their own block according to their own rules—triggering a fork. This new chain initially received support from approximately 2.53% of the global hash rate, meaning only about 1 out of every 40 mining machines worldwide was willing to mine on the new chain.
However, a few chains added only one more block and then stopped updating entirely. The chain with more hash power runs faster and farther. The main chain, which consistently produces a block every ten minutes, has left the minority chains 243 blocks behind (data sourced from bip110.mempool.guide).
bitFlyer's August 10 announcement in Japan only stated that it would continue monitoring the impact of BIP-110, without committing to any specific course of action. Additionally, no major exchange has expressed support for the minority chain, unlike in 2017 during the Bitcoin Cash fork, when many platforms proactively released guidelines.
What you really need to be careful about is a self-hosted node running Bitcoin Knots: BIP-110 has no "replay protection," so the same transaction could be valid on both chains, and improper handling could result in spending the same funds twice.
The BIP-110 miner with the highest hash rate, "Roughnecks," which mined that block, temporarily halted mining, then reversed its decision on August 10 to resume. However, by then, its signaled hash rate had plummeted from over 15 EH/s to just 1.16 EH/s, and no new blocks appeared on-chain. The economic cost of continuing to mine now exceeded the potential rewards.
But supporters do not seem ready to give up; proposal authors Dathon Ohm and Luke, who just lost his editor role, have begun seriously discussing the path mocked by Wang Chun—namely, switching the proof-of-work algorithm to oust specialized mining hardware operators and turn the minority chain into an independent new coin, which remains at the stage of discussion and code experimentation.
But no matter which path it takes, this farce confirms the rules written into Bitcoin’s very foundation: rules may be drafted and edited by a few, with access granted at their discretion—but what truly matters are the miners willing to keep powering the chain with electricity, and the exchanges and users who recognize which chain is legitimate.