BIP-110 Enforcing Branch Stalls, Widening Bitcoin Chain Gap to 88 Blocks

Bitcoin’s BIP-110-enforcing branch has stalled after mining just two blocks, widening the separation from the non-enforcing chain to 88 blocks. The latest update from a BIP-110 monitoring dashboard shows the mandatory-signaling version of the network making extremely slow progress as it awaits further blocks to complete the current difficulty-adjustment window.

According to the BIP-110 monitor (updated at 10:19 am UTC), the enforcing branch was last seen at block 961,633 after a long gap since its previous block. In the meantime, the non-enforcing chain advanced to block 961,721, underscoring how thin the enforcement-side hashpower currently is.

Key takeaways

• The enforcing branch produced only two blocks before stalling, while the non-enforcing chain continued forward, increasing the block-gap to 88.
• The divergence began after BIP-110 entered mandatory signaling at block 961,632, during which only 2.53% of blocks in the preceding window signaled support.
• Mandatory signaling is scheduled to continue through block 963,647, but difficulty adjustment won’t fully help until the enforcing side mines through the remainder of the 2,016-block adjustment period.
• Mining activity on the enforcing branch’s early blocks was attributed, via Ocean records, to a pseudonymous group using Ocean’s DATUM mining protocol.