The Anti-NFT Bitcoin Fork Just Died After Two Blocks — What the BIP-110 Collapse Means for Ordinals Collectors

A controversial plan to ban NFTs and digital art from the Bitcoin network just triggered a blockchain split — and the breakaway chain is already dying. While the fork itself may fizzle out, the debate it sparked reveals a deep divide in the Bitcoin community over whether inscriptions, ordinals, and digital collectibles belong on the world’s most secure blockchain at all.

By Jordan Lee | August 10, 2026

The Hook: When Bitcoin Purists Tried to Evict NFTs

On Saturday, a group of Bitcoin users activated a controversial software upgrade called BIP-110 — a proposal that would temporarily ban people from storing images, text, and other non-financial data inside Bitcoin transactions for one year. The target? NFT inscriptions, the digital collectibles that have been etched onto Bitcoin’s blockchain since early 2023 through the Ordinals protocol.

The result was not what supporters hoped for. According to CoinDesk, the breakaway chain produced just two blocks in roughly eight hours while the main Bitcoin network advanced by 48 blocks in the same period. By Sunday morning, the fork was effectively stalled, with no miners continuing to build on it.

Despite the failure, the episode exposed a bitter ideological war that has been brewing since Ordinals exploded onto Bitcoin in January 2023. On one side: users who believe Bitcoin’s block space should be reserved exclusively for financial transactions. On the other: a growing community of digital artists, collectors, and developers who see Bitcoin’s immutable ledger as the safest place to store digital art and collectibles.

On-Chain Evidence: A Fork That Could Not Survive

Bitcoin recalculates how difficult mining is every 2,016 blocks, aiming to keep blocks arriving roughly every ten minutes. The breakaway BIP-110 chain inherited Bitcoin’s current difficulty setting — designed for the entire global mining network — but had only a tiny fraction of the computing power. The result: blocks arrived hours apart instead of minutes.

According to a BIP-110 situation monitor, only approximately 2.53% of blocks signaled support for the proposal over the past two weeks, far short of the 55% needed to activate it without a split. Bitcoin mining firm AntPool mined the first non-signaling block that the breakaway nodes rejected, while a miner using the Ocean pool produced the alternative that the fork followed.

• 2 blocks produced by the BIP-110 chain in roughly eight hours
• 48 blocks produced by the main Bitcoin chain in the same period
• 2.53% miner support — against the 55% threshold needed
• 350 days to next difficulty adjustment on the fork chain, versus 14 days on main Bitcoin
• BIP-110 signaling window runs until block 965,664, roughly four weeks away

The mechanical cause of the stall is straightforward: with so little mining power, the fork chain cannot produce blocks fast enough to reach the next difficulty adjustment. The monitor estimates that milestone is roughly 350 days away for the breakaway chain, compared to just 14 days for Bitcoin itself. At that pace, the chain is effectively a ghost town.

The Core Conflict: What Does This Mean for NFT Owners?

Here is the part that should matter to anyone who owns Bitcoin NFTs or Ordinals inscriptions: BIP-110 was designed specifically to restrict the kind of data that Ordinals use. Every time someone inscribes a JPEG, a text message, or any non-financial data onto Bitcoin, that data takes up space in a block — the same space that could be used for financial transactions.

Supporters of BIP-110 argued that NFT inscriptions clog the network and push up transaction fees for people who just want to send Bitcoin. Think of it like someone filling a highway with billboards — the road still works, but regular traffic slows down and costs more to navigate.

Opponents — including prominent Bitcoin figures like Strategy chairman Michael Saylor and Blockstream CEO Adam Back — argued the opposite: anyone who pays the transaction fee has bought the right to use that block space however they choose. Bitcoin has always been a permissionless network, and deciding which transactions are “legitimate” sets a dangerous precedent.

For NFT collectors, the immediate takeaway is reassuring. With the fork stalled and only minimal miner support, BIP-110 is effectively dead for now. Your inscriptions on the main Bitcoin chain are safe, and no one is going to retroactively delete them. The Ordinals protocol continues to function normally on the dominant chain.

Market Implications: The Bigger Picture for Bitcoin NFTs

While BIP-110 appears to have failed, the debate it represents is far from over. Bitcoin Ordinals have generated significant fee revenue for miners since their launch, and the ecosystem has produced notable collections — from the original Ordinal Punks to the Quantum Cats collection. With Bitcoin currently trading around $63,850 and the network processing thousands of transactions daily, the question of how to allocate limited block space will keep resurfacing.

The BIP-110 supporters are now pushing it as a user-activated soft fork, or UASF — meaning they want individual node operators to enforce the rule change rather than miners. The strategy mirrors the 2017 activation of SegWit via BIP-148, where users successfully forced a protocol change despite insufficient miner support. But the parallels are imperfect. SegWit had broad industry backing and solved a genuine technical bottleneck. BIP-110 is more of a philosophical statement about what Bitcoin should and should not be used for.

There is also a replay risk that NFT holders should understand. Because both chains accept identical transactions, selling coins on the fork chain could theoretically expose sellers to an attack where a buyer rebroadcasts the same transaction on the main chain and collects real BTC. Developers have warned users not to sell fork coins while spending their main-chain Bitcoin. For NFT inscriptions, this is less of a concern since inscriptions are tied to specific satoshis that exist only on one chain.

The Verdict: NFTs on Bitcoin Survive — But the Debate Does Not

The BIP-110 fork failed because it never had the mining support needed to sustain a competing chain. Two blocks in eight hours is not a network — it is an experiment that did not work. For NFT collectors and Ordinals enthusiasts, the immediate risk is zero. Your inscriptions on the main Bitcoin chain were never in danger.

But this will not be the last attempt to restrict non-financial data on Bitcoin. As long as Ordinals exist, there will be voices arguing they do not belong. The debate touches on fundamental questions about what Bitcoin is: a purely financial instrument, or a general-purpose decentralized data layer that happens to secure money?

For now, the market has spoken. Miners, who have the most direct economic stake in Bitcoin’s direction, chose to keep the network open to all comers. NFT artists and collectors can keep inscribing — and the fees they pay will continue to flow to the miners who protect the network. That is the outcome the free market delivered, and it is the outcome most Bitcoin users seem to prefer.

The cryptocurrency market remains highly volatile. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.