The BIP-110 bitcoin fork has fallen 300 blocks behind the main network — mining difficulty has become insurmountable.
A Bitcoin branch that split off as part of the BIP-110 implementation has encountered a critical problem: its blockchain has fallen more than 300 blocks behind the main network. The reason is the inherited mining difficulty, which remained at the level of the main chain—a colossal 127.48 trillion. This value was recorded at the moment of the fork, and now the network cannot adjust it until the completion of a full period of 2016 blocks, i.e., until reaching height #963,647.
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the fork's hashrate constitutes only a fraction of a percent of Bitcoin's computational power. This creates a paradoxical situation: the network must undergo a full difficulty recalculation cycle, but with current power levels, this process could stretch out for an indefinitely long time. Time estimates range from 350 days to 25 years—all depending on what share of hashrate can actually be attracted to the fork's side.
It is important to understand that BIP-110 was supposed to change consensus rules, but the technical implementation left the fork hostage to the difficulty algorithm. Until the network reaches the target height, miners will be forced to work with an unrealistically high difficulty threshold, making block mining economically unfeasible. This is a classic example of how forks that split off without proper preparation for difficulty recalculation risk falling into a "trap" of inherited parameters.
In my practice, similar situations have occurred before—for example, with forks that did not provide for an emergency difficulty reduction mechanism. However, here the scale of the problem is unique: a gap of 300 blocks with such a hashrate means the network is effectively frozen. If developers do not propose an emergency protocol update, the project could remain in stagnation for years, casting doubt on its viability as an independent network.