Bitcoin is approaching its most consequential protocol fork since the block size war, with two competing proposals threatening to split the network by August.
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Bitcoin faces two forks as BIP-110 nears with 67% spam traffic
Bitcoin is approaching its most consequential protocol fork since the block size war, with two competing proposals threatening to split the network by August.
Bitcoin faces two competing forks this summer as BIP-110's activation nears, with 67% of network traffic from ordinals and runes, on-chain data shows.
"The network is at an inflection point where a vocal minority wants to enforce a narrow use case, but the economic majority has shown little interest in changing the rules," Paul Sztorc, a longtime Bitcoin researcher and creator of the Drivechain proposal, said.
BIP-110, which would restrict Bitcoin transactions to payments and peer-to-peer transfers, requires 55% of mined blocks in a 2,016-block difficulty period to signal support for early activation. Public trackers place signaling below 1% as of June, far short of the threshold. If unmet, BIP-110 nodes will begin rejecting non-signaling blocks at height 961,632, projected for early August — effectively creating a separate, narrower network. The remaining Bitcoin network would continue accepting those blocks as valid.
The stakes are significant: Bitcoin holders could end up controlling assets on up to three networks — Bitcoin, an eCash fork scheduled for Aug. 21, and a BIP-110 breakaway chain — each with distinct rules and economic assumptions. Replay attack risks mean users who import seed phrases into unfamiliar fork software could lose real bitcoin.
eCash takes a different path
While BIP-110 attempts to restrict Bitcoin's functionality from within, the eCash project plans to launch a separate blockchain via hard fork on Aug. 21. Created by Sztorc, eCash activates the Drivechain proposal — a sidechain architecture that would allow Bitcoin to support larger blocks, privacy tools, tokens, and Ethereum-like applications through merge-mined sidechains. Nearly every bitcoin holder at the fork's snapshot point will receive a corresponding eCash balance.
The project has drawn controversy for its treatment of Satoshi Nakamoto's coins. Rather than airdropping the full allocation to addresses believed to belong to Bitcoin's creator, eCash plans to reserve roughly half of those coins to fund development and reward early backers.
What holders should watch
The replay attack risk is the most immediate concern for Bitcoin holders. Because forked coins share the same cryptographic key pairs as real bitcoin, a transaction broadcast on one network can be copied and rebroadcast on another if developers do not implement proper protections. Users should avoid importing Bitcoin seed phrases or private keys into unfamiliar fork software while those keys still control bitcoin.
The broader question is whether either fork gains meaningful traction. During the 2017 block size war, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold attracted significant mining power and exchange listings. Today's proposals face a more fragmented landscape and a Bitcoin userbase that has largely coalesced around the status quo.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
