Where Signaling Stands
BIP-110 (Dathon Ohm, assigned 2025-12-03) - recent retarget periods, per bip110monitor.com
| EPOCH | BLOCKS SIGNALLING | RATE |
|---|---|---|
| 472 (current) | 4 of ~742 mined so far | 0.54% |
| 471 | 7 of 2,016 | 0.35% |
| 470 | 0 of 2,016 | 0.00% |
| 469 | 0 of 2,016 | 0.00% |
| 468 | 2 of 2,016 | 0.10% |
THRESHOLD
55% of blocks in a single retarget period (1,109 of 2,016).
CURRENT GAP
Across the last four epochs, voluntary signaling has not exceeded 0.54%. No major pool has signaled.
EPOCHS REMAINING
The current BIP-110 draft sets mandatory signaling for blocks 961,632-963,647. From the snapshot above, the start of that window is roughly four to five retarget periods - about nine weeks - away.
Mandatory Signaling Mechanics
What changes at the August signaling deadline
THE BLOCKS
At a specific future block height, BIP-110 nodes move from counting voluntary bit-4 signaling to rejecting blocks that don't signal for the deployment. Per the current BIP-110 draft, mandatory signaling enforcement begins at block 961,632, projected around 2026-08-07. During blocks 961,632-963,647, BIP-110 nodes reject any block that does not signal bit 4. That forces lock-in no later than 963,648; the transaction restrictions become active one retarget period later at 965,664.
DURATION
Restrictions lift automatically after
52,416 blocks (~1 year) from the ACTIVE height. Framed by authors as "a one-year deployment that can be refined or extended".EARLY LOCK-IN
If any retarget period before then hits 55%, lock-in is triggered with no need to wait for mandatory signaling.
ADAM BACK'S WARNING
Back's framing (reported May 2026) is that BIP-110 will either self-fork at the mandatory-signaling deadline or simply fail to activate: with under 5% node support and zero backing from major pools, the threshold is unreachable and the mandatory path forces the question of whether a Knots-side minority will create a chain.
Minority-Hashrate Outcomes
Murch's thread, echoed by Lopp
THE CLAIM MURCH DEBUNKS
Murch (Bitcoin BIP editor, @murchandamus) opens his 2026-02-19 thread: "There is this claim that comes up a lot that a soft fork will win, even if it starts out with a minority of the hashrate upon activation. Let's dig into that for a bit." He calls the asymmetric-advantage narrative "a false narrative that is still being perpetuated despite being debunked a year ago".
WHY THE MINORITY CHAIN STRUGGLES
If Ocean is the only pool signaling at ~1% of total hashrate:
- Expected output is 1-2 blocks per day, versus 144 on the main chain.
- Coinbase outputs need 100 confirmations - at 2 blocks/day that's ~50 days before any reward becomes spendable.
- Exchanges would impose extreme confirmation counts on a minority chain due to reorg risk, pushing real liquidity even further out.
- Reaching the next difficulty retarget (2,016 blocks) would take ~3 years at that rate, per Lopp.
WHO HAS TO ACCEPT A BLOCK FOR A SOFT FORK TO STICK
Murch: "A soft fork that is designed to reject blocks from miners ONLY works if the nodes rejecting the blocks are nodes that the miner NEEDS to accept in order to 'cash out' their coinbase rewards." Many signaling nodes have "no economic power" - so their rejection has no cost to miners on the majority chain. The bypass route he flags is
invalidateblock, which any operator can use to manually permanently reject the minority fork without coordinated activation.Trackers and Voices
Where to follow this between now and August
WICKED SMART BITCOIN
Maintains
wickedsmartbitcoin.com/bip110_signaling, a community-facing per-epoch signaling tracker.BIP110MONITOR
bip110monitor.com shows current-epoch counts and recent epoch history alongside threshold context.LOPP'S GUIDE
blog.lopp.net/a-laymans-guide-to-bip-110/ - long-form layperson explainer that summarises Murch's analysis and walks through the minority-chain scenarios.SPEC HOME
bip110.org for the authors' framing: 55% threshold, voluntary deadline, ~1-year temporary deployment.THIS WINDOW (MAY 7 - JUNE 3)
No new substantive consensus-level material on BIP-110 itself. The numbers continue to drift: 0.00% in two of the last four epochs, 0.54% in the current one. The August mandatory-signaling window is roughly four to five retarget periods away from the snapshot above.