Bitcoin’s BIP-110 Split Highlights a Governance Contrast With Cardano

Bitcoin’s BIP-110, known as the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork, was closed on August 9 after nodes enforcing the proposal separated from the dominant chain and the minority branch quickly stalled.

The proposal sought to temporarily restrict several methods used to store arbitrary data on Bitcoin, turning a technical disagreement over block space into a broader dispute over how decentralized networks coordinate contentious protocol changes.

BIP-110 Minority Chain Stops After Two Blocks

BIP-110 proposed a one-year set of consensus restrictions covering several methods of embedding larger amounts of data in Bitcoin transactions.

The rules targeted mechanisms including OP_RETURN data, certain Taproot constructions and techniques associated with inscriptions and other non-payment uses of the network.

Its activation design allowed miners to signal support through a version bit, with a 55% threshold enabling earlier lock-in. A mandatory signaling phase was scheduled to begin at block 961,632.

Support remained far below that threshold.

Only about 2.53% of blocks during the preceding signaling period supported BIP-110. When the dominant BTC chain accepted a block without the required signal, nodes enforcing the proposal rejected it and continued on a separate branch.

That branch produced blocks 961,632 and 961,633 before mining effectively stopped.

The minority chain inherited Bitcoin’s existing mining difficulty but operated with only a small fraction of the network’s hashrate. It therefore lacked enough computational power to sustain normal block production, while the dominant BTC chain continued operating normally.

BIP-110 was subsequently marked Closed.

Wendy O Responds to the BIP-110 Conflict

The technical dispute was accompanied by months of increasingly hostile debate involving supporters and opponents of BIP-110, Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Knots and competing views over acceptable uses of Bitcoin block space.

Crypto commentator Wendy O addressed the social side of the conflict, criticizing the use of technology associated with individual empowerment as a vehicle for bullying other participants.

Her comments concerned the tone surrounding the dispute rather than the technical reason the fork failed.

The outcome itself was driven by the proposal’s activation rules, limited miner signaling and insufficient hashrate on the minority chain.

Bitcoin’s BIP process also does not make miners the sole authority over protocol development. Publishing a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal does not establish consensus or guarantee adoption.

Acceptance ultimately depends on wider participation across users, infrastructure providers and the economic network.

BIP-110 therefore became both a failed attempt to alter consensus rules and an example of how contentious protocol disputes can spill into prolonged social conflict.

Cardano Formalizes Protocol Governance On-Chain

Cardano uses a different process for protocol-level decisions.

Under the governance framework introduced through CIP-1694 and the Voltaire era, governance actions move through defined on-chain procedures involving Delegated Representatives, stake pool operators and the Constitutional Committee.

The required approvals depend on the type of governance action.

Hard fork initiation actions require participation from DReps, SPOs and the Constitutional Committee before ratification under Cardano’s governance rules. Governance actions, votes and ratification outcomes are recorded on-chain.

Off-chain debate remains part of that process. Cardano governance still includes lobbying, public disagreement and competing interests between ecosystem participants.

The difference lies in how those disagreements are converted into formal protocol decisions.

A Cardano hard fork proposal must pass through a predefined governance action with specified voting bodies and ratification thresholds before activation. BIP-110 reached a point where enforcing and non-enforcing Bitcoin nodes followed different consensus rules without enough support to sustain the alternative chain.

BIP-110 is now closed, with its minority branch halted after two blocks. Bitcoin and Cardano still face the same underlying problem of coordinating people around disputed protocol changes, but the mechanisms used to turn those disagreements into network decisions are fundamentally different.