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Mandatory window begins
Bitcoin’s BIP-110 entered its mandatory-signaling phase at block 961,632 on Saturday, with miners signaling support in just 51 of the preceding 2,016 blocks, or 2.53%, according to the BIP-110 monitor.
“entered its mandatory-signaling phase at block 961,632”
Starting at block 961,632, nodes enforcing BIP-110 began rejecting blocks that did not set version bit 4, while ordinary Bitcoin nodes continued accepting both signaling and non-signaling blocks, as described by TradingView.
The proposal’s deployment schedule set blocks 961,632 through 963,647 as a mandatory-signaling window, with nodes enforcing BIP-110 rejecting blocks that do not carry the signal, and TradingView added that block 963,648 marked the beginning of its locked-in state.
In the same mandatory window, Crypto News reported that BIP-110 remained frozen at block 961,633 while Bitcoin’s main chain advanced through block 961,744, and it said current-period signaling stood at zero among 113 main-chain blocks mined since mandatory signaling began Saturday.
Crypto News also quoted Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor saying “about 99.85% of Bitcoin’s hashpower stayed with Bitcoin,” framing the result as decisive even as the enforcing branch stalled.
Two chains, diverging nodes
As mandatory signaling began, nodes enforcing BIP-110 rejected non-signaling blocks and split off from the dominant Bitcoin network, with TradingView describing that “A minority BIP-110 branch subsequently emerged, but quickly fell behind the dominant chain.”
Crypto News said the enforcing branch was unable to produce a third block hours after mandatory signaling began, noting that the enforcing branch still sat at block 961,633 while the dominant chain reached 961,744.
The Cryptonews.net guide to live monitoring described how observers could watch for a chain split by comparing Bitcoin Core tips against “an RDTS-enforcing Knots build,” and it said a fractured blockchain could emerge if miners produced blocks that BIP-110 rejects after block 961632.
Cryptonews.net also quoted Fork.observer’s maintainer saying the dashboard was “Connected to a mix of 50+ nodes: Bitcoin Core, Knots, BIP-11O, btcd, floresta, electrum, and mempool-space.”
In parallel, Crypto News reported that the monitor recorded zero signaling blocks among the first 113 blocks on the dominant chain, and it described the gap widening as the enforcing branch remained stuck on the two-block chain.
What happens next
BIP-110’s timeline kept moving even with weak miner support, because TradingView said the deployment schedule set blocks 961,632 through 963,647 as a mandatory-signaling window and defined block 965,664 as the point when its transaction restrictions take effect.
“block 965,664 as the point when its transaction restrictions take effect”
TradingView further said BIP-110 proposes temporary consensus restrictions lasting roughly one year, including limiting most new output scripts to 34 bytes and capping OP_RETURN outputs at 83 bytes, while unspent transaction outputs created before activation would be exempt.
Crypto News described how the minority branch’s stall offered a “clearest test yet” of how much mining support BIP-110 attracted, and it said the branch inherited the same mining target as the dominant chain so losing most mining power did not immediately make blocks easier to find.
In a separate assessment, the incrypted article said “Roughnecks mining team” supported BIP-110 but “eventually announced it was shutting down operations,” adding that the team meeting at “0340 UTC” led to a decision to stop mining under the name Roughnecks.
The incrypted article also quoted Michael Saylor writing that “Bitcoin worked exactly as designed,” and it tied that to his estimate that “about 99.85% of Bitcoin’s hashpower stayed with Bitcoin,” while warning that the fork’s difficulty problem could make it take “~25 years” to reach its first difficulty adjustment.
