Bitcoin’s BIP-110 minority chain remains stalled after only two post-split blocks. The original proposal is officially closed, Start9 has removed its RDTS package from normal distribution, and supporters are now working toward something much more radical: replacing SHA-256 and potentially launching a separately mined Bitcoin-derived network.
By Rabid Mining — August 11, 2026
Bitcoin’s BIP-110 battle has entered an entirely new phase.
What began as a temporary soft-fork proposal intended to restrict certain forms of arbitrary data on Bitcoin ended with a real blockchain split and a minority chain that almost immediately ground to a halt.
The original BIP-110 proposal is now officially marked Closed.
But the movement behind it does not appear to be finished.
Instead, supporters are discussing — and beginning to work through — a much larger change:
Replace Bitcoin’s SHA-256 proof-of-work algorithm.
If that software actually launches, this will no longer simply be a dispute over Bitcoin transaction policy.
For miners, node operators and exchanges, it would effectively create a separate proof-of-work network descended from Bitcoin’s blockchain history.
What Was BIP-110 Trying to Do?
BIP-110 is formally called the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork, or RDTS.
The proposal was designed as a temporary one-year consensus change that would place tighter restrictions on several ways arbitrary data can be stored inside Bitcoin transactions.
Its stated goal was to discourage blockchain data storage and refocus Bitcoin toward its use as money.
BIP-110 used a modified activation system with a 55% miner-signaling threshold.
More importantly, it also included a mandatory-signaling period beginning at:
Block 961,632
During that period, BIP-110-enforcing nodes would reject blocks that failed to signal the required version bit.
That created a dangerous situation if most Bitcoin miners refused to cooperate.
And that is exactly what happened.
When height 961,632 arrived, the overwhelmingly dominant Bitcoin mining network continued building blocks under the existing rules while BIP-110-enforcing nodes followed their own compatible blocks instead.
The chains separated.
The BIP-110 Chain Produced Two Blocks — Then Stalled
OCEAN’s dedicated BIP-110 mining endpoint shows the split clearly.
Roughnecks mined:
Block 961,632
on August 8 at approximately 20:12 UTC.
Roughly an hour and a half later, Roughnecks also mined:
Block 961,633
at approximately 21:49 UTC.
Then the chain stopped advancing.
At the latest Rabid Mining check on August 11, OCEAN’s BIP-110 endpoint was still showing:
Current pool hashrate: ~5.27 EH/s
24-hour hashrate: ~4.45 EH/s
Difficulty: 127.48 trillion
Last block: 961,633
Time since last block: roughly 67 hours
OCEAN estimated an average block interval of about 34 hours based on the pool’s 24-hour average hashrate.
That makes the current situation especially interesting.
Hashpower has returned to the BIP-110 branch.
Several exahashes are actively trying to mine it.
But at the time of writing:
Block 961,634 still has not been found on the BIP-110 chain.
Why Is the Minority Chain So Slow?
The biggest problem is Bitcoin’s mining difficulty.
When BIP-110 split from the dominant Bitcoin network, it inherited a difficulty designed for Bitcoin’s enormous global SHA-256 mining industry.
But it did not inherit anything close to Bitcoin’s total hashrate.
Bitcoin normally waits 2,016 blocks before performing a normal difficulty adjustment.
If a minority chain suddenly loses almost all of the mining power that established its current difficulty, those 2,016 blocks can take an extraordinarily long time to produce.
Start9’s BIP-110 analysis demonstrates how extreme this can become.
At only 1% of the original hashrate, average block times could stretch to around 16 hours and 40 minutes, and reaching the first normal retarget could take approximately 3.8 years.
Even then, Bitcoin limits how far difficulty can fall during a single adjustment.
So one retarget may not be enough.
That leaves the minority chain trapped with:
Bitcoin-sized difficulty without Bitcoin-sized mining power.
And that difficulty trap is one of the main reasons supporters are now discussing a hard fork instead of simply waiting for the chain to recover naturally.
BIP-110 Is Officially Closed
The status of the original BIP itself is no longer up for debate.
The official Bitcoin BIP repository now lists:
BIP-110 — Status: Closed
Its August 9 changelog says it was closed following:
“a chain split with stalled mining.”
This is an important distinction.
The original BIP-110 proposal is finished.
Anything that comes next involving a new mining algorithm and new difficulty rules would go substantially beyond the soft fork described in BIP-110.
OCEAN Has Separated the Two Mining Choices
OCEAN has also made its mining configuration much clearer since the split.
Its normal Stratum endpoint has returned to serving non-BIP-110 Bitcoin work.
Miners who specifically want to support the BIP-110/RDTS branch must deliberately opt into OCEAN’s separate BIP-110 endpoint or use their own BIP-110 node through DATUM.
That means the several exahashes currently visible on the BIP-110 page should not be interpreted as the entire OCEAN pool supporting that chain.
It is now an explicit mining choice.
OCEAN’s normal pool has continued finding blocks on the dominant Bitcoin chain well beyond the BIP-110 split point, while its dedicated BIP-110 endpoint remains at 961,633.
Start9 Removed RDTS From Its Marketplace Registries
The stalled blockchain has also begun affecting node software distribution.
Start9 removed its Bitcoin Knots RDTS flavor from its normal registries on August 9.
The reason was practical.
According to Start9, a new RDTS installation could no longer synchronize a functioning chain, while some of the package’s onboarding claims were no longer accurate after the network stalled.
Existing installations were not automatically removed.
Users who deliberately want the RDTS software can still sideload the package from GitHub.
Start9 also made clear that this was a product-function decision rather than a political verdict on BIP-110.
Still, it demonstrates how the stalled chain has moved beyond an abstract Bitcoin debate.
It now affects people trying to operate real nodes and services.
Now Comes the Radical Plan: Replace SHA-256
This is where the story becomes much bigger.
The original BIP-110 was designed as a Bitcoin soft fork.
Replacing SHA-256 is something entirely different.
A network that begins accepting blocks mined with a completely different proof-of-work algorithm requires incompatible consensus rules.
That means a:
Hard fork.
Start9’s current documentation now describes a possible three-chain situation.
The existing Bitcoin network would continue using the current consensus rules and SHA-256.
The stalled BIP-110/RDTS branch would remain the minority SHA-256 chain.
And a potential third branch could descend from RDTS using:
A new proof-of-work algorithm plus a downward difficulty adjustment.
Start9 labels the software for this potential third chain as:
New client — unreleased.
That part is critical.
There is still no finished public hard-fork client that miners can download and inspect.
But discussion has clearly moved well beyond whether a PoW change should even be considered.
Luke Dashjr Began a Public Algorithm-Selection Process
On August 11, Luke Dashjr publicly described a method for selecting the proposed new proof-of-work algorithm.
The idea was to prevent anybody involved in the development process from secretly knowing the winning algorithm in advance and gaining an early hardware advantage.
Luke said he had created a weighted mapping of candidate algorithms and published a SHA-256 commitment to that mapping.
Then, beginning at 14:00 UTC on August 11, a future Bitcoin Testnet4 block would provide the unpredictable value used to determine which algorithm was selected.
The last character of the selected Testnet4 block hash would determine an entry in the hidden mapping.
Once the block appeared, Luke would reveal the mapping so others could verify that it had not been changed after seeing the result.
That was the theory.
Then things got messy.
The First Selection Appeared to Point to BLAKE2b
In subsequent posts, Luke published Testnet4 headers and worked through the selection.
At one point, the calculation shown publicly resulted in:
“9 = BLAKE2b”
That made it appear that BLAKE2b might become the new proof-of-work algorithm.
But the selection did not end cleanly.
Luke subsequently said that multiple Testnet4 blocks had appeared at nearly the same time and accused opponents of deliberately attempting to interfere with the process.
His response was essentially:
Should the selection be attempted again — or should they simply use SHA3x?
So the situation right now is very important to describe accurately.
BLAKE2b is NOT confirmed as the final algorithm.
The attempted selection initially pointed toward BLAKE2b, but problems with the Testnet4 selection procedure left the result unsettled.
SHA3x has now also been raised as a possible path.
Until an actual hard-fork client is released with one algorithm coded into its consensus rules, miners should treat the final algorithm as unconfirmed.
Several Algorithms Have Been Discussed
Public discussion around the proposed PoW change has included multiple possibilities.
Names circulating through the development and community discussions include:
BLAKE2b-256, SHA3x, BLAKE2s, BLAKE3x2, Eaglesong and Scrypt.
The exact choice matters enormously to miners.
A proof-of-work algorithm determines what kinds of hardware can realistically compete on the network.
Different choices could favor CPUs, GPUs, existing specialized hardware or eventually newly designed ASICs.
Changing away from SHA-256 therefore does not automatically mean the resulting network remains ASIC-resistant forever.
It primarily means that today’s Bitcoin SHA-256 ASIC fleet would no longer be able to directly mine the new chain.
Would This Be a New Coin?
This has become one of the most heated arguments surrounding the proposal.
Some BIP-110 supporters argue that a hard fork does not automatically mean “altcoin.”
Their position is that the market ultimately determines which blockchain deserves to be called Bitcoin.
If most economic value, users, businesses and exchanges migrated to the new-PoW chain, they argue that the new chain could remain Bitcoin while the SHA-256 chain would become the minority network.
Critics strongly disagree.
They argue that a contentious hard fork with incompatible proof-of-work rules necessarily creates another cryptocurrency.
There is an important difference between the technical and branding sides of this argument.
Technically, if one network requires:
SHA-256d
while another accepts:
BLAKE2b, SHA3x or another incompatible proof-of-work algorithm,
then they are separate consensus networks.
Existing Bitcoin ASIC miners cannot mine both algorithms.
Normal Bitcoin nodes cannot accept the new-PoW blocks without modified software.
The two chains would have their own miners, hashrate, difficulty, block production and eventually potentially separate market values.
Which one exchanges label BTC would ultimately be an economic and social decision.
But operationally, miners and node operators would absolutely be dealing with two different networks.
The BIP-110 Fight Has Also Reached Bitcoin Governance
The controversy has now spread well beyond mining.
On August 9, Bitcoin contributor and BIP editor Murch formally proposed removing Luke Dashjr as a BIP editor.
Murch alleged conflicts of interest and claimed Luke had used BIP editorial authority inconsistently while being heavily involved with BIP-110.
Luke rejected the accusations and said he had followed the BIP process consistently.
Other Bitcoin developers then joined the discussion, with several supporting Luke’s removal.
The discussion also exposed an unusual governance question: there was no clearly established formal procedure for removing a BIP editor.
On August 10, longtime BIP editor Bryan Bishop confirmed on the Bitcoin Development Mailing List that:
Luke Dashjr was no longer a permissioned user of the BIP content repository.
Whatever someone thinks of BIP-110 itself, that is major fallout from the dispute.
Luke Is Also Taking a Sabbatical From OCEAN
Luke has additionally announced that he is taking a sabbatical from OCEAN, where he has served as Chairman and CTO.
He said his immediate focus would move toward Bitcoin and open-source development.
This should not be described as Luke permanently quitting OCEAN.
He specifically called it a sabbatical.
But the timing is notable.
Within a matter of days, the BIP-110 chain split, stalled, the BIP was officially closed, Luke lost permissioned access to the BIP repository, and work accelerated toward a possible replacement proof-of-work network.
What About September 1?
September 1 has also appeared repeatedly in discussions about what could happen next.
But this date requires some caution.
September 1 was already part of the original BIP-110 deployment plan.
The BIP previously moved its maximum activation height to:
Block 965,664
which was estimated around September 1, 2026.
There have since been claims and discussion connecting September 1 with the new proof-of-work fork as well.
However, there is still no released hard-fork client containing a final activation height for the new mining algorithm.
So Rabid Mining is not treating September 1 as a confirmed new-PoW launch date yet.
Until the software ships, it remains a possible target rather than a guaranteed fork date.
There Still Is No Public Finished PoW-Fork Client
This is probably the most important thing miners should remember.
The public repository for Dathon Ohm’s official BIP-110 activation client still identifies itself as the BIP-110 Bitcoin Knots fork.
At the latest check, it showed only one open pull request and no obvious released production implementation containing the new proof-of-work hard fork.
That means there is currently a gap between:
The plan
and:
A network miners can actually run.
Before this becomes a real launchable cryptocurrency, we need to see the actual code defining the new mining algorithm, fork point, block-header format, difficulty rules, replay protection and network parameters.
What Miners Need to Watch Next
The next major development will be the publication of the actual hard-fork software.
That will answer the questions that matter most:
Which proof-of-work algorithm won?
What hardware can mine it?
Where does the new chain fork?
How dramatically will difficulty be reset?
Will there be a new difficulty-adjustment algorithm?
How will replay protection work?
Will OCEAN or other pools support the new chain?
Will explorers and wallets support it?
And perhaps most importantly:
Will exchanges recognize it as Bitcoin, list it as another coin, or ignore it entirely?
Until those questions are answered in actual code and infrastructure, the new chain remains a plan rather than a completed launch.
Rabid Mining Summary
The original BIP-110 experiment is effectively over.
The official BIP is now marked Closed after its mandatory-signaling rules produced a blockchain split and mining stalled.
The BIP-110 branch produced only:
Block 961,632
and:
Block 961,633
after the split.
Several exahashes have since returned through OCEAN’s dedicated BIP-110 endpoint, but at the latest Rabid Mining check the minority chain still had not produced block 961,634.
Start9 removed its RDTS package from normal marketplace distribution because a fresh node could no longer synchronize a functioning chain.
OCEAN separated standard Bitcoin mining from the BIP-110 endpoint.
And now the strategy behind BIP-110 appears to be changing fundamentally.
Instead of trying to win over Bitcoin’s existing SHA-256 mining industry, supporters are considering:
Replacing the mining algorithm entirely.
Luke Dashjr has already attempted a public randomized algorithm-selection process.
That attempt appeared to produce BLAKE2b, but the Testnet4 selection became disputed and the final choice remains unsettled, with SHA3x subsequently raised as another possibility.
At the same time, Luke has lost permissioned access to the Bitcoin BIP repository and announced a sabbatical from his Chairman and CTO roles at OCEAN.
So this story is no longer simply:
“Did BIP-110 win or lose?”
BIP-110 as originally proposed is closed.
The bigger question now is:
Will its supporters launch a completely new proof-of-work network?
If they publish a hard-fork client using a new mining algorithm, new difficulty rules and incompatible consensus, the result will no longer simply be the original BIP-110 soft fork.
From a mining and node perspective, it will be an independently mined Bitcoin-derived blockchain.
Whether that network ever gains enough users, miners, economic value or exchange support to challenge Bitcoin is an entirely different question.
For now:
BIP-110 is closed.
Its minority SHA-256 chain remains stalled.
A replacement proof-of-work fork is being worked on.
BLAKE2b is not confirmed.
SHA3x is not confirmed.
There is no finished public hard-fork client yet.
That is what Rabid Mining will be watching next.
— Rabid Mining
Published August 11, 2026. This is an actively developing situation. Chain status, mining hashrate, algorithm selection, software plans and consensus rules may change after publication.
Sources
Official Bitcoin BIP-110 Specification — Reduced Data Temporary Softfork
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0110.mediawiki
Start9 — Navigating the BIP-110 / RDTS Activation and Chain Split
https://start9.com/bip110/
OCEAN — BIP-110 / RDTS Mining Endpoint
https://bip110.ocean.xyz/dashboard
OCEAN — Standard Bitcoin Mining Endpoint
https://ocean.xyz/dashboard
Luke Dashjr — Public PoW Algorithm Selection Process
https://x.com/LukeDashjr/status/2087164051797192886
Luke Dashjr — Current X Posts / Algorithm Selection Follow-Ups
https://x.com/LukeDashjr
Bitcoin Development Mailing List — Motion to Remove Luke Dashjr From BIP Editors
https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev/c/knbv3MFwlvU
Dathon Ohm — Public BIP-110 Activation Client Repository
https://github.com/dathonohm/bitcoin