A friend of mine recently texted me and asked:
"Does it appear #BIP110 will succeed?"
You'll find the answer I sent them below. I hope you find it helpful, in case you or someone you know is wondering this, as well.
"Short answer: Yes, IMO. It has several times more node runners supporting it than BIP-148 had in 2017, but what's even more important is the game theory around the prisoner's dilemma in which the BIP places the miners.
Basically, the miners have a lot to lose & practically nothing to gain by ignoring/resisting BIP-110, but the node runners have practically nothing to lose & a lot to gain by enforcing it. Miners that choose to ignore or fight it risk wasting electricity & losing blocks they had previously found (which could ruin their business), while miners that signal for it risk nothing. They don't want to start signaling their support for it too early, though, because they want to keep their competitive advantage over other miners, so they likely won't start signaling for it until they have to (which will likely be in early August).
So, unless there's a centralized & coordinated effort among the largest mining pools, or another BIP that deliberately resists BIP-110 (called a User Rejected Soft Fork, or URSF), BIP-110 will be a shoe-in. But if formerly-competing miners successfully collude to fight what the node runners want, then Bitcoin is a provably centralized & failed project, & all the bitcoin they're mining will fall in value. And there is currently no serious URSF effort, but if there were, it would be like the Red & Blue Button meme that has been going around online:
A URSF would be like pressing the Blue button, & would only succeed if most node runners agree to risk hurting themselves to stop BIP-110. Everyone else (whether they enforce BIP-110, hate BIP-110 but do nothing about it but argue online, or they don't care either way) would be pressing the Red button by default, which activates BIP-110.
So this is not a technical matter nearly as much as it is a matter of game theory & incentives, which are stacked significantly in BIP-110's favor."
Fin.
