And the infighting has already turned personal. A senior BIP editor has formally called for the removal of Luke Dashjr, one of Bitcoin’s longest-serving core developers, accusing him of bypassing procedures and unilaterally pushing the proposal through. Miners are demanding the ousting of OCEAN leadership after their hashpower was allegedly redirected without consent.

This isn’t just a technical debate. It’s a governance crisis that could determine who really controls Bitcoin’s future—and whether your holdings are as safe as you think.

The Fork That Wasn’t

On August 9, 2026, at block height 961,632, a small group of Bitcoin nodes supporting BIP-110 broke away from the main network. Their goal: impose a one-year ban on storing non-financial data—images, text, inscriptions—in Bitcoin transactions, a move they argued would reduce congestion and costs.

It lasted roughly eight hours and produced exactly two blocks.

The BIP-110 chain stalled at block 961,633, while the main Bitcoin chain advanced to block 961,681—a gap of 48 blocks within a single day. By August 10, that gap had ballooned to over 100 blocks. The reason is simple math: the breakaway chain inherited Bitcoin’s 127.48 trillion mining difficulty but controlled only a tiny fraction of the network’s hashpower. At one point, Michael Saylor estimated the minority branch could take 25 years to mine the 2,016 blocks needed for its first difficulty adjustment.

“Consensus is earned, not declared,” Saylor said, arguing that miners, exchanges, custodians, and holders had overwhelmingly remained with the dominant network.

The Real Drama: A Governance Meltdown

But the fork itself was just the opening act. The real controversy is now unfolding in Bitcoin’s developer ranks and mining community.

Mark “Murch” Erhardt, a Bitcoin Core developer and fellow BIP editor, has formally recommended removing Luke Dashjr from the BIP editors group. Murch accused Dashjr of prematurely assigning a BIP number to the proposal and merging a related pull request within minutes of it being opened—bypassing the coordination and review that typically accompanies changes of this magnitude.

This isn’t a petty squabble. BIP numbers act as identifiers that signal a proposal has passed a minimal editorial sanity check. When that check is skipped, a proposal can move forward with undeserved authority. And when that proposal leads to a network fork, the damage extends far beyond one person’s reputation.

Several Bitcoin developers have backed the removal effort. Dashjr, however, has rejected the accusations, calling them false and countering that Murch should be removed instead.

Miners Cry Foul

Meanwhile, the mining pool OCEAN is facing its own crisis. The pool allegedly redirected some users’ hashrate to the BIP-110 minority chain without clear consent, an incident that lasted roughly 18 hours. Miners who believed they were using non-BIP-110 templates found their hardware mining blocks on a separate fork instead.

The backlash was immediate. Blockstream CEO Adam Back criticized the move as unacceptable and demanded that financial losses be deducted from OCEAN co-founder Luke Dashjr’s salary. Some in the mining community are now pushing for a soft fork update to prevent similar incidents. OCEAN’s hashrate reportedly fell 96% in the aftermath.

The Escalation: A PoW Change?

Here’s where it gets truly dangerous. Instead of conceding defeat, BIP-110 supporters are now talking about changing Bitcoin’s proof-of-work algorithm entirely. Dathon Ohm, the proposal’s author, accused large mining pools of colluding to turn Bitcoin into a “toxic data dumping ground” and said supporters were working on a PoW change intended to “fire the miners”.

A proof-of-work change would represent a far more disruptive escalation than BIP-110’s original soft fork. It would create a separate mining environment, forcing supporters to build their own base of miners, wallets, exchanges, and liquidity from scratch.

Roughnecks, the pseudonymous mining group that found both blocks on the BIP-110 branch, initially suspended operations—then reversed course, announcing it would resume mining and continue until a “sensible POW change” could replace the mining pools it blamed for abandoning the branch.

What This Means for You

Bitcoin’s price has remained stable around $65,000 despite the division. But stability isn’t the same as safety. The BIP-110 episode has exposed deep fractures in Bitcoin’s governance model—fractures that won’t heal overnight.

The 55% signaling threshold was already unusually low by historical standards (SegWit required 95%, Taproot used 90%). If a proposal with such a low bar can still trigger a chain split and an editorial civil war, what happens when the next contentious proposal comes along?

I think we’re watching a stress test of Bitcoin’s decentralized governance. And while the system held this time, the scars are real. The BIP-110 chain may have stalled, but the fight over who gets to define Bitcoin’s rules is just getting started.

Summary

The BIP-110 soft fork failed to gain meaningful miner support, producing just two blocks before stalling. But the real story is the aftermath: a formal call to remove a veteran BIP editor, allegations of procedural manipulation, a mining pool accused of redirecting hashpower without consent, and threats of a proof-of-work change that could split the ecosystem further. Bitcoin’s price held steady, but the governance wounds are fresh—and they’re a reminder that in Bitcoin, consensus is never truly permanent.