Summary
- Public miner support signalling for BIP-110 remains far below the level most observers associate with a successful Bitcoin upgrade ahead of the likely activation point on Aug. 9.
- Supporters say that misses the point: BIP-110 is a user-activated soft fork, not a miner vote.
- The episode reveals that Bitcoins governance is ultimately driven by economic coordination, not outright consensus.
Bitcoin is approaching a rare test this weekend, with a small group of nodes is preparing to reject blocks produced by almost all of the networks miners.
The Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP)-110, a controversial proposal to temporarily restrict how much non-payment data can be stored on the Bitcoin blockchain, approaches its long-planned mandatory signalling period, expected to be sometime on Aug. 9. The actual activation, if it takes place, would follow at block 965,664, estimated around four weeks later.
Its ordinary 55% approval threshold is already out of reach.
Nodes are computers running Bitcoin software that independently check transactions and blocks against the networks rules, rejecting anything they consider invalid. Miners create new blocks, while nodes decide whether to accept them.
On paper, BIP-110 looks finished, with public signaling from mining pools negligible at under 3% and only two days to go until the Bitcoin network reaches the height at which
If BIP-110 was a referendum, “landslide” wouldnt begin to describe the scale of its defeat.
Its proponents argue that Bitcoins software means anyone is free to adopt a different version of the code and enforce whatever rules they believe define the network.