Digital Assets Watch: BIP-110 Breakaway Chain Faces a Long Fight to Survive

Latest reporting indicates that 8, the tiny Roughnecks pool has burned scarce hashpower chasing a chain almost nobody can trade, grinding out just four blocks across seven days.

Now, BIP-110 supporters are preparing an even bigger gamble: abandoning double SHA-256 for Blake2b, a proof-of-work (PoW) primitive used by only a handful of Nakamoto-consensus chains, most notably Sia.

The BIP-110 faction broke from the main Bitcoin network and managed to grind out a microscopic four-block chain tip.

That would normally kill a fork cold, but BIP-110 proponents have another escape route: ditch the minority chain’s crushing SHA-256 difficulty by replacing its PoW cryptographic hash function entirely.

Word on the street is that the PoW switch could land in September.

As of today, Roughnecks had dragged the minority chain to block 961635, only for it to stall again after that block was mined three days ago on Aug.

Block 961636 has since accumulated a staggering pile of fees, but with virtually zero trading platform support, nobody can put a credible price on the BIP-110 forked asset and how much those fees would be worth.

BIP-110 proponents, including Ocean co-founder Luke Dashjr, say the minority chain will swap its PoW from SHA-256 to Blake2b.