Fractal Bitcoin has confirmed that its first halving is complete and FIP-102 is now active. The network has been running smoothly since the upgrade, with nodes and indexing services operating
Fractal Bitcoin has confirmed that its first halving is complete and FIP-102 is now active. The network has been running smoothly since the upgrade, with nodes and indexing services operating normally based on early network activity. The team said it will continue monitoring the network and asked operators to report any service issues.
The project is now turning to several follow-up changes. Fractal plans to move 1.5 million FB from the second-year Ecosystem Treasury to the Fractal Vault, while burning the remaining balance from that allocation, along with unused FIP-101 legacy rewards and undistributed Public Testing rewards. It also plans to release FIP-30, which proposes retroactive development rewards for contributions made to Fractal during 2025–26.
Work is also moving ahead on the next stage of Fractal’s Bitcoin integration. FIP-103 will establish how native FB distribution on Bitcoin mainnet will work, with the community expected to participate in the discussion. Meanwhile, FIP-104 remains under development as a community proposal that would allow miners to opt to direct their mining rewards into Index Mining stakes under the FIP-101 framework.
FB token faces a difficult test as Fractal enters its next phase
Fractal’s latest update comes at a difficult point for FB in the market. The token is trading around $0.34, with a market capitalization of roughly $38 million and about 110.2 million FB in circulation. That is a substantial price from its $39.25 all-time high recorded in September 2024, leaving FB more than 99% below its peak.
The network itself is still designed around fast, Bitcoin-compatible infrastructure. Fractal produces blocks roughly every 30 seconds, compared with Bitcoin’s roughly 10-minute block interval, while its proof-of-work system allows miners to use existing Bitcoin-compatible ASIC hardware. Its Cadence Mining model also combines permissionless and merged mining, giving miners different ways to participate in securing the network.

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CoinMarketCapIn November 2024, Binance Pool added support for Fractal Bitcoin’s merged mining, allowing Bitcoin miners on the platform to earn FB rewards and send them to external wallets. Binance clarified that supporting FB mining did not mean the exchange had plans to list the token.
How lower block rewards affect Bitcoin miners
Bitcoin’s April 2024 halving reduced the block subsidy from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, immediately cutting the amount of newly issued Bitcoin miners receive for each block. With roughly 144 blocks produced daily, the subsidy alone represents about 450 BTC entering the market each day before transaction fees are included.
That reduction has made electricity costs and mining-machine efficiency much more important. Recent industry estimates put the average production cost for publicly listed miners at roughly $37,856 per BTC, compared with about $16,800 before the previous halving. Miners operating older, less efficient machines therefore face greater pressure when Bitcoin prices or transaction-fee income weaken.
The industry is responding by consolidating and looking for alternative sources of revenue. Some mining companies are increasingly moving into AI and high-performance computing, using the same power infrastructure and data-centre capacity for workloads that can generate more predictable returns than mining alone.
What happens to blockchain security when mining becomes less profitable
When mining becomes less profitable, some miners may shut down machines that are no longer generating enough revenue to cover electricity and operating costs. This can reduce the network’s total computing power, or hashrate, making it cheaper in relative terms for an attacker to acquire enough computing power to attempt a 51% attack or reorganize recent transactions. Research into Bitcoin’s eventual fee-only environment has warned that very low fee income could create weaker incentives for honest mining and potentially make certain forms of mining manipulation more economically attractive.
For now, there is no evidence that Bitcoin is approaching such a security crisis. The long-term transition in its security budget may pose as bigger issue. As subsidies decline, the network needs sufficient transaction demand and fee revenue to keep attracting miners. In 2026, fees remain only one part of mining income, so the question is whether Bitcoin usage can grow enough over successive halvings to compensate for the shrinking subsidy.
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