Bitcoin cannot activate any soft forks for now, Drivechain creator says

Bitcoin has failed to activate every proposed soft fork since Taproot went live in 2021, leading Drivechain creator Paul Sztorc to argue that the network cannot approve any such upgrade for the foreseeable future. Summary BIP-110 attracted 2.53% miner support before its enforcing branch stalled after two blocks. Paul Sztorc said every proposed soft fork since Taproot has failed to activate. Drivechains would place experimental rules on separate chains but require a Bitcoin consensus change first. Sztorc said sidechain fee revenue would influence miners’ incentive to protect Drivechain withdrawals. Paul Sztorc, CEO of LayerTwo Labs and creator of the Drivechain proposal, told crypto.news that BIP-110’s failed activation points to a problem extending far beyond one disputed Bitcoin upgrade. “All soft forks since Taproot have failed to activate, and this was no exception,” Sztorc said. His assessment followed the collapse of BIP-110, a proposed temporary soft fork that sought to restrict some forms of non-financial data stored in Bitcoin transactions. The proposal drew only 51 supporting blocks during a 2,016-block difficulty period, leaving miner signaling at 2.53%. BIP-110 enforcing...