An ambitious attempt by renowned developer Luke Dashjr to change the fundamental architecture of Bitcoin has failed spectacularly. The hard fork launched on September 1, intended to "clean" the blockchain of all data not related to payments and return mining to ordinary computers, was met with almost complete indifference from miners and exchanges. The new chain using the BLAKE2b algorithm received only a negligible share of computational power, and Blockstream CEO Adam Back succinctly drew a line under this saga.
The essence of the conflict and the technical reasons for the fiasco
The BIP-110 proposal promoted by Dashjr was radical: to remove from Bitcoin blocks everything that is not a direct transfer of value. Supporters of the idea, including Dashjr himself, referred to the main network as nothing less than "Spamcoin." However, the overwhelming majority of market participants considered the network split on September 1 an empty gesture not worthy of attention.
The key technical mistake was changing the hashing algorithm. The switch from SHA-256 to BLAKE2b automatically rendered useless all specialized ASIC miners on which the industry depends. Instead of attracting "ordinary users," the fork instantly cut itself off from industrial capacity. The hash rate of the new branch collapsed almost immediately after launch, making the network not only insecure but also economically unviable.
Market reaction and negligible liquidity
The market responded with demonstrative indifference. No major exchange added the new asset to its listings. The only test platform that opened order acceptance under the ticker BTCB2 showed a complete absence of real trading. Buy orders did not rise above $82 — almost 900 times lower than the rate of the original Bitcoin — and the spread between the best bid and ask price reached 131.7%, indicating zero market depth and a complete lack of interest.
Dashjr himself, however, continues to insist that it is his secondary chain that is the "real Bitcoin," claiming that the BTC ticker now belongs to the new network. Blockchain data and the behavior of traders, who paid no attention to this fork while BTC traded steadily near $76,900, eloquently suggest otherwise.
My analysis: This episode is a clear demonstration that in modern Bitcoin, social consensus and economic viability matter more than the ideological fervor of individual developers. An attempt to forcibly change the rules of the game without the support of miners and exchanges is doomed to failure. Dashjr seems to have overestimated his role in the ecosystem and underestimated the inertia and power of the established mainstream.