Bitcoin just hit block 961,632, and with it, one of the strangest governance battles in years reached its climax. The mandatory signaling period for BIP-110 went live on August 8, 2026. A small group of node operators now rejects blocks produced by almost the entire mining industry.
If you hold BTC, you might wonder whether this means free fork coins are coming your way, like Bitcoin Cash back in 2017. Short answer: almost certainly not. Long answer below, including why “free coins” headlines around BIP-110 should raise your scam radar.
What Is BIP-110?
BIP-110, formally the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork, is a proposal to restrict arbitrary data storage on Bitcoin for roughly one year (52,416 blocks). The pseudonymous developer Dathon Ohm wrote it, with the original draft credited to Luke Dashjr. You may also know it under its old number, BIP-444.
The target is clear: Ordinals inscriptions, BRC-20 tokens, Runes, and every other protocol that stuffs images, text, and token metadata into Bitcoin transactions. Supporters call this spam. In their view, Bitcoin exists to be money, and JPEGs on the blockchain crowd out payments while bloating the load on node operators.
To fight that, BIP-110 introduces seven new consensus rules. The highlights:
- Most new transaction outputs capped at 34 bytes
- OP_RETURN outputs limited to 83 bytes again
- Certain witness elements capped at 256 bytes
- Several Taproot features used for inscriptions temporarily restricted
Standard BTC payments would keep working, and outputs created before activation are grandfathered in. The rules would expire automatically after about a year.
The spark was Bitcoin Core 30, which relaxed the default OP_RETURN relay limits in late 2025. For the “Bitcoin is money” camp, that felt like the developers rolling out a red carpet for spam. BIP-110 is their counterpunch.
What Is a Soft Fork?
Quick refresher, because the distinction matters a lot here.
A soft fork tightens the rules of a blockchain. Transactions valid under the new rules remain valid under the old rules, so upgraded and non-upgraded nodes can, in theory, stay on the same chain. SegWit in 2017 worked this way.
A hard fork loosens or changes the rules in a way old nodes reject. That guarantees a chain split if anyone keeps running the old software. Bitcoin Cash was the classic example, and holders received coins on both chains. We covered how that works in our guide to free cryptocurrency hard forks.
Here is the twist with BIP-110. Even though it is technically a soft fork, it can still split the network. If a minority of nodes enforces the stricter rules while miners ignore them, those nodes will reject nearly every block the miners produce. Two incompatible chains can emerge anyway, just through the back door.
Why Fork Drama Is Personal for Us
Full disclosure: the Bitcoin Cash fork is one of the reasons AirdropAlert exists. Back in 2017, we were already farming airdrops full-time and making good money while travelling the world. Everywhere we went, we talked to dozens of people about airdrops, and the same problem kept coming up: a massive information gap. People simply didn’t know this free money existed, or how to claim it safely.
Meanwhile, we had been following the Bitcoin scaling drama for months. When it became clear the fork was really coming, the idea clicked. Someone needed to build a website for airdrops and hard forks, because too many people were leaving free money on the table. That fork was going to be huge, not just for security reasons, but for the claim itself. AirdropAlert was born shortly after, and Bitcoin Cash became one of our first listings.
Fun side note: around 15 friends sent me their Bitcoin, a few hundred BTC combined, because they were too scared to claim the Bitcoin Cash fork themselves and mess something up. I claimed it for all of them. Obviously, I took a small management fee for the service 😉
So yes, we watch every fork drama closely, and we know what a real fork payout looks like. That experience is exactly why we can tell you with confidence: BIP-110 is not one of them.
Why BIP-110 Is (Probably) Dead on Arrival
The numbers tell the story. Miner support for BIP-110 has rarely exceeded 2.5%, while voluntary activation required 55%. That gap is not close. It’s a canyon.
Heavyweight opposition piled on too. Michael Saylor argued the proposal turns a spam dispute into a consensus change that invalidates currently valid, fee-paying transactions. Adam Back and Jameson Lopp came out against it as well, with Lopp warning it undermines Bitcoin’s censorship resistance and predictability.
Supporters shifted strategy in response. Since miners won’t activate it, they now push BIP-110 as a user-activated soft fork, or UASF. Their argument: miners don’t govern Bitcoin, they just produce blocks. Nodes decide which blocks count. From block 961,632 onward, BIP-110 nodes enforce the new rules regardless of what miners signal.
That principle worked in 2017, when the UASF movement pressured miners into activating SegWit. The difference is that SegWit had broad economic support behind it. BIP-110 has a passionate minority and almost nothing else.
Could Bitcoin Split Into Two Chains?
In theory, yes. From activation onward, two networks can exist side by side: the dominant mainnet backed by nearly all hash power, exchanges, and institutional capital, and a minority chain populated exclusively by BIP-110-enforcing nodes.
In practice, a minority chain with under 3% support has a survival problem. With almost no hash power mining valid blocks under its rules, the BIP-110 chain would produce blocks at a crawl, if at all. The most likely outcome is that it grinds to a halt while the main chain rolls on as if nothing happened.
For a split to produce a tradeable fork coin, the minority chain needs miners, exchange listings, wallet support, and liquidity. None of that exists here. Anyone promising you free BIP-110 coins today is selling something.
What Is a Replay Attack?
This is the part that makes forks without safeguards genuinely dangerous, so let’s break it down.
When a blockchain splits, both chains share the same history up to the fork point. Your keys, addresses, and balances exist identically on both. A transaction you sign is therefore valid on both chains, unless one of them adds replay protection, a rule change that makes transactions on one chain invalid on the other.
A replay attack exploits the absence of that protection. You send 0.5 BTC to an exchange on chain A. Someone copies that exact signed transaction and rebroadcasts it on chain B. Result: your coins move on both chains, even though you only intended to spend on one. You didn’t get hacked, and nobody stole your keys. The network simply accepted a perfectly valid transaction twice.
BIP-110 ships without replay protection. Its authors see it as a rule tightening rather than a new network, so they never added one. If a viable minority chain somehow emerged, every ordinary Bitcoin transaction could be replayed across both chains. Anyone who lived through the Bitcoin Cash era remembers the coin-splitting gymnastics required to spend safely.
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What Should Bitcoin Holders Do?
Honestly? Nothing. Your BTC is not at risk from BIP-110 itself. The proposal restricts data storage, not payments, and it almost certainly won’t activate in any meaningful form.
A few sensible habits still apply:
- Keep self-custody of your coins, so you control your keys in any fork scenario. If the recent hardware wallet drama has you doubting your setup, our breakdown of whether Ledger is still safe covers what actually matters.
- Ignore any site, DM, or “airdrop” asking you to connect a wallet or enter a seed phrase to claim BIP-110 fork coins. No such coins exist. Scammers love fork confusion, and we fully expect fake claim pages to pop up this month.
- If a real split ever gained traction, wait. Let exchanges and wallet providers handle replay protection before moving funds. Rushing to claim fork coins is how people lose the original ones.
Final Words
BIP-110 will most likely be remembered as a governance stress test rather than an actual upgrade. A passionate minority forced the entire industry to answer an uncomfortable question: who really decides what Bitcoin is for, miners, developers, or node operators?
The spam debate isn’t going away. Block space demand from inscriptions and tokens keeps colliding with the “Bitcoin is money” ethos, and Core’s relay policy changes guarantee more rounds of this fight. For holders, though, this weekend changes nothing. No new coins, no action required, and no reason to click anything promising otherwise.
If you enjoyed this blog, check out our recent coverage of the rise of fake $XRP airdrops this week.
As always, don’t forget to claim your bonus on Bybit EU below. See you next time!
FAQ
Will I get free coins from BIP-110? Almost certainly not. With miner support under 3%, no viable second chain is expected to survive, which means no fork coin to claim or trade.
Is BIP-110 a hard fork or a soft fork? Technically a soft fork, because it tightens Bitcoin’s rules rather than loosening them. A chain split remains possible anyway if minority nodes reject majority-mined blocks.
Does BIP-110 have replay protection? No. In the unlikely event of a persistent chain split, ordinary transactions could be replayed on both chains.
When does BIP-110 activate? The mandatory signaling period began at block 961,632 on August 8, 2026. Enforcement only matters on nodes running BIP-110 software, which represent a small minority of the network.
Does BIP-110 affect my ability to send or receive Bitcoin? No. Standard payments remain valid under the proposed rules, and the near-zero adoption means nothing changes for regular users either way.
Morten Christensen
Crypto class of ’13, airdrop farmer since 2016. Avid trader and DeFi veteran. His market commentary has been featured by Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, and CNN.
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