Bitcoin's BIP-110 Goes Live With Almost No Miners Behind It

At bitcoin block 961,632 on 7 August 2026, BIP-110's mandatory signaling window opened, and within hours the on-chain footprint told most of the story: fewer than three percent of blocks were carrying the supporting signal, according to Cointelegraph's deployment coverage. Bitcoin itself traded in a roughly $64,300 to $65,300 range across the same window, tagging month-to-date highs on the back of softer US nonfarm payrolls rather than any enthusiasm for the fork.

BIP-110 is the most consequential governance test bitcoin has staged since the 2017 block-size war, and it is unfolding with familiar choreography: a small, ideologically committed faction trying to bend the protocol's economic majority through user-activated soft-fork (UASF) mechanics rather than through hashpower. What is different this time is the venue. The 2017 fight was over block capacity, a parameter miners could directly observe. The 2026 fight is over relay policy, a parameter that affects how nodes forward transactions and that, by design, can be enforced without mining support.

The relay-policy fight, in plain terms

BIP-110 does not change bitcoin's consensus rules. It changes what full nodes are willing to relay. The proposal asks node operators to refuse to forward transactions whose witness data exceeds a defined ceiling, on the argument that large inscriptions and other non-monetary payloads are bloating the chain, raising fees for ordinary payments, and creating legal exposure for relay nodes. Bitcoin Core developers have declined to ship the change as a default, and BIP-110's backers have responded by distributing a forked node implementation and asking the broader ecosystem to run it.

Mandatory signaling began at block 961,632. From there, the proposal's own rules require enforcing nodes to reject blocks that include any transaction violating the new relay ceiling. Coindesk reported on 8 August 2026 that the design is intentionally miner-independent: even if miners ignore the proposal, nodes running BIP-110 software will still orphan their blocks. That is what makes it a UASF in substance, even if the deployment mechanism has been rebranded.

The mechanics matter because they invert bitcoin's usual power map. For most of the asset's history, miners have set the pace and full-node operators have ratified their work. BIP-110's structure flips that: full nodes, and the exchanges, custodians and wallet operators who connect through them, are asked to dictate policy to miners. The economic theory says that if enough economic weight runs the new software, miners have no choice but to follow or be paid in a worthless coin. The empirical record from 2017 says the theory works, but only at the margins, and only when the economic majority is large and loud.

Where the miners actually stand

Mining pools have, in public, lined up against the change. Coindesk's 6 August 2026 analysis noted that BIP-110 had attracted "only a sliver of miner support" going into activation and that "influential commentators have also voiced their opposition." Cointelegraph's 8 August coverage put the supporting figure at below 3 percent of blocks. The available source items do not specify which specific pool operators have or have not signaled. That is consistent with how a UASF is supposed to begin: the signal is a flag the minority flies first, and the majority is asked to fall in line or be priced out.

The structural concern, voiced repeatedly by Core developers and large mining operations in the available coverage, is that the relay ceiling is not actually enforceable without coordination from miners. If a miner includes a violating transaction in a block, the BIP-110 chain will reject that block, the non-BIP-110 chain will accept it, and the network splits. That is not a bug. It is the policy. The question is whether the economic weight follows the policy or the hashrate.

The replay danger the developer warned about

The operational hazard surfaced on 8 August 2026 by Coindesk is concrete. If a minority chain persists, anyone who sells what they think is BIP-110 fork-coin at a premium could find that the signed transaction is replayable on the main chain, draining their real BTC in the process. Coindesk reported a developer arguing that the safest posture for holders is to do nothing until the chains can be cleanly separated, either by BIP-110's activation and clear dominance or by its quiet abandonment.

That replay risk is the reason venues across the ecosystem have had to plan for a fork scenario. Cointelegraph's 8 August coverage flagged the broader question of whether enforcing nodes can sustain the change amid limited miner signaling and discussion of a hard-fork fallback, an admission from inside the proposal's own ranks that the soft-fork path may not hold. The available source items do not specify which major exchanges or custodians have issued formal holding-pattern guidance to customers.

Why the proposal refuses to die

The political economy here is unusual. BIP-110 has near-zero miner support, has been declined by Bitcoin Core maintainers, and has attracted public opposition from senior developers and large pool operators. By the standard playbook, it would already be dead. Coindesk's 6 August piece on the proposal's persistence argues the opposite: a UASF by design continues toward activation regardless of miner sentiment, on the theory that the only way to find out whether economic weight will follow is to ship it. The proposal's backers are not trying to win the hashpower vote. They are trying to force the economic vote.

That is also why a hard-fork fallback is now part of the conversation. If BIP-110 activates as a UASF, splits the chain, and the BIP-110 side fails to attract sustained economic weight, the question becomes whether its backers simply capitulate, or whether they preserve their work as a separate network. A hard fork would be a confession that the soft-fork path did not work. The available source items do not specify which way the proposal's principals are leaning, only that the option is on the table.

Macro context: oil, jobs and the dollar the fork is swimming against

The fork is not happening in a vacuum. Brent crude climbed through the week on stalled Strait of Hormuz talks, per Coindesk's 7 August daybook, reviving the inflation worry that has capped bitcoin's upside all summer. Bitcoin's intraday volatility has compressed, a condition that has historically preceded sharp directional moves in either direction. The US nonfarm payrolls print on 7 August 2026 came in soft, which Cointelegraph read as a tailwind for risk assets and a cooling of Fed rate-cut bets. Bitcoin tagged $65,300 in the hours after.

The relevant point for the fork debate is that the macro tape is giving the BIP-110 chain no tailwind at all. A contentious split during a low-volatility grind higher is harder to sell as a positive-sum event than a split during a panic, when reflexive flows can pick a side on momentum. The proposal's backers are asking the market to allocate attention and capital to a governance project at exactly the moment when the market's attention is on jobs prints and Brent.

What to watch over the coming days

The activation window runs roughly two weeks. If the BIP-110 chain is going to attract economic weight, the first signs will be exchange and custodian position-taking: which venues credit fork-coin to holders, which pause withdrawals, which publicly side with the enforcing chain. The second sign will be hashrate migration. Even a small but visible migration of pools toward BIP-110-compatible block construction would change the political calculation. The third sign is mempool behaviour: if a meaningful share of transactions is being censored by enforcing nodes, fee markets will bifurcate and the two chains will start quoting different prices for the same byte of block space.

None of that has meaningfully happened yet. As of 8 August 2026, the proposal is technically live and politically isolated. The next move belongs to the exchanges and the custodians.

The stakes if it succeeds

If BIP-110 attracts enough economic weight to enforce its relay ceiling, bitcoin's centre of gravity moves from miners and Core maintainers toward node operators, exchanges and the wider economic stack. That is a structural change in who governs the protocol. It also creates a precedent: future protocol fights can be waged the same way, with a minority node coalition shipping software the majority has refused to merge. The argument for the change is that miners have proven unable or unwilling to police non-monetary data on the chain, and that someone has to. The argument against is that the policy is unenforceable without miners, and that pretending otherwise risks a replay-driven loss event for ordinary holders.

If BIP-110 fails, the failure itself becomes data. The economic majority, in this reading, has spoken: relay policy remains a Core developer and miner decision, not a node-operator vote. Either outcome reorders power inside the bitcoin ecosystem. The fork window is now open.

Desk note: This publication framed BIP-110's activation as a governance test with operational replay risk, drawing on Cointelegraph's deployment reporting and Coindesk's policy and developer sourcing, rather than treating it as a price story. The macro thread (jobs, oil, dollar) is reported as context, not as the lead.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-bip-110-mandatory-signaling
• https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/08/07/frame-bitcoin-s-bip-110-enters-mandatory-signaling-with-less-than-3-miner-support
• https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/08/08/bitcoin-holders-risk-losing-real-btc-if-they-sell-coins-from-bip-110-fork-says-developer
• https://cointelegraph.com/markets/bitcoin-price-tags-653k-august-high-as-low-us-jobs-numbers-cool-fed-rate-bets
• https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/08/06/why-bitcoin-s-bip-110-refuses-to-die-despite-near-zero-miner-support
• https://www.coindesk.com/daybook-us/2026/08/07/bitcoin-s-volatility-has-nearly-disappeared-the-risk-hasn-t
• https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/08/07/live-updates-bitcoin-flat-at-usd64-300-before-us-jobs-report-with-oil-back-as-a-headwind
• https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/bitcoin-rises-toward-65000-as-fresh-security-risks-hit-infrastructure-4847628