A proposed change to Bitcoin's protocol has crossed into mandatory signaling, the phase where miners must formally broadcast their position on a pending rule change, even as fewer than 3% of miners have indicated support. That proposal is BIP-110, short for Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110, a formal specification for altering how the $BTC network operates. The gap between the milestone and actual miner backing is now forcing a test of whether enforcing nodes can carry the change without a meaningful mining base behind them.
What the signaling threshold actually means
Bitcoin miners signal by embedding data in the blocks they produce, indicating whether they accept or reject a proposed protocol change. In a mandatory signaling phase, that declaration becomes a requirement rather than a voluntary gesture. The network then measures whether enough blocks carry the signal before the change can activate.
BIP-110 has reached that phase. The support levels have not followed.
The enforcing-node problem
An enforcing node is a machine on the Bitcoin network that will reject any block that does not comply with the proposed new rules. When miner support sits below 3%, enforcing nodes that adopt BIP-110 risk building a minority chain. A minority chain has less hash power securing it, which makes it slower to produce blocks and more exposed to reorganization attacks.
That is the position BIP-110 enforcing nodes now occupy.
A hard-fork fallback enters the conversation
A hard fork is a protocol change that breaks backward compatibility entirely. Nodes that do not upgrade cannot follow the new chain. Discussion of a hard-fork fallback for BIP-110 signals that some network participants view the mandatory signaling path as insufficient and are weighing a more aggressive activation mechanism to push the change through.
What the network has reached is a deployment milestone. Miner support for BIP-110 remains below 3%.