The proposed change to the rules of the Bitcoin network caused a temporary separation of the chain on Saturday. The new version of the protocol was supposed to prohibit the storage of extraneous data in transactions. The support of the majority of active miners on the global network was required to accept the update. The update received only a small fraction of the necessary votes from network participants. Computers with the new software began to reject the standard blocks of the network. They continued to build an alternative chain exclusively from labeled blocks. The main Bitcoin network confidently continued its standard operation without failures. The separated chain was able to produce only two new blocks over the weekend. Now it is noticeably behind the main network by three hundred and twenty-six blocks.

The split-off network faced a serious technical problem due to the lack of miners. The new chain inherited the extremely high complexity of mining from the main network. Mining blocks requires huge computational costs without any financial return. The new coin does not yet have a market value and official stock market listings. The network should produce two thousand sixteen blocks to automatically reduce complexity. At the current extremely low speed, this process will take more than six years. Every hour of network downtime pushes back the moment of technical adjustment of complexity. The next scheduled difficulty adjustment in the main network will take place in twelve days. The main network calmly continues to process user transactions in the normal mode.

Industry experts have already summarized the first results of this technical experiment. The director of the research company noted the dependence of security on total computing power. Controversial rule changes without the support of miners are doomed to the status of minority forks. The main Bitcoin network remained completely intact after this split. Other analysts consider such conclusions to be somewhat premature at this stage. Rule changes require complex coordination between developers and miners.