Key Takeaways
- Bitcoin is heading into a contested rule-change window right now: a proposal called BIP-110 enters mandatory miner signaling around block 961,632, projected for August 7, 2026 — but miner support has stayed below 1% since May.
- A soft fork tightens the rules and, when it goes smoothly, does not split the coin. A hard fork loosens them and creates two separate chains — the way Bitcoin Cash split off in 2017.
- Miners "signal" support for upgrades in the blocks they produce. BIP-110 needs 55% of a two-week window to lock in — a lower bar than the 95% used for past upgrades like SegWit.
- For almost every everyday holder, no action is needed. A proposal with near-zero miner support is very unlikely to change anyone's Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Is Having a Live Rules Debate Right Now
Most people assume Bitcoin's rules are carved in stone — 21 million coins, ten-minute blocks, and nothing anyone can touch. Others assume the opposite: that some small group could quietly rewrite it overnight. Both are wrong, and a live standoff playing out this summer shows why.
The proposal is called BIP-110 — formally, the "Reduced Data Temporary Soft Fork." Written by a developer using the name Dathon Ohm, it would, for about a year, restrict the arbitrary non-financial data some people stuff into Bitcoin transactions: Ordinals inscriptions, BRC-20 tokens, and large data payloads. Whether that's a good idea is fiercely contested. Michael Saylor and Blockstream CEO Adam Back have publicly opposed it, warning it sets a precedent for transaction censorship.
But you don't need an opinion on Ordinals to learn something valuable here. BIP-110 is a rare, real-time look at how Bitcoin actually changes — a process that's normally invisible.
Soft Fork vs. Hard Fork: The Difference That Matters
This is the single most important distinction, so let's be precise.
A hard fork loosens the rules — it makes things valid that weren't before. Any computer running the old software will reject the new blocks, so the network splits permanently into two separate coins. That's exactly what happened on August 1, 2017, when Bitcoin Cash split off at block 478,558. Anyone holding Bitcoin at that moment automatically received an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash, because the two chains shared identical history up to the split.
A soft fork does the opposite — it tightens the rules. New blocks still look valid to old software, so in a healthy activation the coin stays whole and no new asset appears. BIP-110 is a soft fork. If it works as intended, there's no "free coins" moment and nothing splits.
If you want a refresher on what these blocks and rules actually are, our plain-English guide to blockchains covers the foundation.
How Miners "Vote" on Upgrades
Bitcoin has no CEO and no board. So how does a change get adopted? Through a rough form of coordination called miner signaling.
Every block a miner produces contains a few spare bits of data — think of them as a checkbox. When miners want to support an upgrade, they tick that box in the blocks they mine. Software everywhere counts the ticks. If enough blocks signal support within a set window, the new rules "lock in" and activate.
BIP-110 uses a modified version of this system. If 55% of blocks in a single two-week difficulty period signal support — 1,109 out of 2,016 blocks — the change locks in early. That's a deliberately low bar. Past upgrades like SegWit in 2017 required 95%. And the number to watch is stark: as of mid-July 2026, BIP-110 signaling has never cumulatively topped roughly 1%, hovering around 0.3–0.8% — about 5 exahashes per second out of a network total near 940. Essentially one pool, Ocean, is producing the signal. Understanding hashrate helps here, and we broke that down in Bitcoin's June 2026 difficulty drop.
UASF: The Backstop Against Miner Power
Here's a wrinkle that makes Bitcoin's design clever. What if miners refuse to signal something users genuinely want? Miners produce blocks, but they don't get to be the final authority.
The answer is a User-Activated Soft Fork, or UASF. On a set "flag day," the economic nodes — exchanges, businesses, and individuals running their own software — can simply start enforcing the new rules themselves, with or without miner cooperation. BIP-110 is built this way, with its flag day near August 7, 2026.
This isn't theoretical. In 2017, a UASF (BIP148) threatened to enforce SegWit whether miners liked it or not. The mere threat of a split pushed miners to cooperate, and SegWit activated without any lasting fork. It's a reminder that in Bitcoin, users — not miners — hold the ultimate leverage.
Why BIP-110 Is Very Unlikely to Touch Your Coins
Put the pieces together and the likely outcome comes into focus. A soft fork needs broad buy-in from miners, node operators, exchanges, and users to matter economically. BIP-110 has almost none of it — sub-1% miner support with the deadline weeks away, plus prominent developers like Jameson Lopp calling its activation parameters "reckless."
Analysts widely expect one of two anticlimactic results: the proposal quietly fizzles, or it produces a tiny minority chain with negligible activity that major exchanges won't list or credit. That is fundamentally different from 2017's Bitcoin Cash, which created a real, tradable asset holders had to actively claim.
There's one technical footnote worth knowing: BIP-110 includes no "replay protection," because it isn't meant to split the chain. If an unintended split did happen, a single transaction could briefly be valid on both chains — messy, but a scenario the near-consensus expectation says won't play out at these support levels.
What Should You Actually Do?
For the vast majority of holders, the honest answer is: nothing. If your Bitcoin sits on a mainstream exchange, the exchange handles any fork mechanics for you. If a contested soft fork like BIP-110 fizzles — as expected — your balance simply doesn't change.
The people who need to understand this process are self-custody holders, because they're the ones in direct control of their coins during any network event. Historically, that control has been an advantage: in 2017, self-custodied holders could independently claim their forked coins on their own terms. If you keep your own keys, a dedicated offline device like a Ledger hardware wallet keeps you in charge regardless of how any fork resolves — a point we cover fully in our Bitcoin self-custody guide.
Beyond that, the real payoff here isn't a to-do list — it's understanding. Bitcoin's rules aren't frozen, and they can't be hijacked. They change only through a slow, public process that requires the whole network to agree. The same mechanics behind scheduled changes like the halving govern contested ones like BIP-110. Learn the process once, and the next fork debate — there's always a next one — will make perfect sense.