Bitcoin BIP-110 Faces 2017 Bitcoin Cash Fork Scenario, Not Clean Defeat
What You Need to Know
- BIP-110 targets block 961,632 in early August to remove ordinals, runes, and NFT inscriptions from Bitcoin.
- Ordinals and runes comprise over 67% of Bitcoin transactions, generating $2.3 million in daily network fees.
- BIP-110 signaling remains minimal because miners profit from ordinal-heavy blocks, making consensus unlikely.
- A failed BIP-110 could trigger a chain split similar to the 2017 Bitcoin Cash fork rather than clean defeat.
BIP-110, a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal with an activation target at block height 961,632 in early August, is attempting to purge ordinals, runes, and NFT inscriptions from the Bitcoin network. If it fails to achieve broad consensus, which current signaling strongly suggests it will, it could still produce a chain split rather than a clean defeat.
The proposal’s supporters, including Blockstream’s Adam Back, frame ordinals and runes as spam that degrades Bitcoin’s function as a payment network. That argument has a long history in Bitcoin governance, and it has consistently lost to the reality of miner economics. Ordinals and runes currently account for over 67% of Bitcoin transactions, and the network is processing more than 621,000 transactions per day with over 91% of blocks full, according to Ycharts. The network is generating $2.3 million in daily fees. Miners approving ordinal-heavy blocks are being paid to do so, which is precisely why BIP-110 signaling has remained minimal.
The more instructive precedent here is not a technical one. It is the 2017 Bitcoin Cash fork, where a motivated minority failed to capture the longest chain and split off permanently rather than winning by attrition.
That outcome is the realistic ceiling for BIP-110. A small coalition of nodes and miners could begin producing BIP-110-compliant blocks after the activation height, creating a parallel chain that most of the network simply ignores. The risk is not ideological victory for either camp; it is operational confusion in the short window around block 961,632, where some wallets, including the Bitcoin Knots wallet associated with the BIP-110 package, could break and render coins temporarily unspendable. Users transacting around the activation date are taking on a narrow but real technical risk that has nothing to do with which side of the ordinals debate they are on.
The deeper issue BIP-110 surfaces is structural. The post-halving fee environment has made low-cost inscription activity viable again, and Bitcoin’s base layer is absorbing it without congestion. If the anti-ordinals faction cannot make an economic or technical case that resonates with miners now, during a period of relatively modest fee pressure, the window for that argument only narrows as the next cycle matures and inscription activity predictably accelerates again.
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