Yeah, I also noticed this odd conflation in the OP. Clearly, the rules proposed by BIP 110 constitute a soft fork. However, with the minority hashrate in support the implementing nodes would likely be permanently split from the best chain onto their own chaintip. Since the difficulty would be prohibitive at their current support level (let’s generously say 1% ~> 200 weeks to the first difficulty adjustment), if they double down, they’d likely then follow up with a hardfork that either reduces the difficulty or changes the PoW mechanism.
Yeah, I also noticed this odd conflation in the OP. Clearly, the rules proposed by BIP 110 constitute a soft fork. However, with the minority hashrate in support the implementing nodes would likely be permanently split from the best chain onto their own chaintip. Since the difficulty would be prohibitive at their current support level (let’s generously say 1% ~> 200 weeks to the first difficulty adjustment), if they double down, they’d likely then follow up with a hardfork that either reduces the difficulty or changes the PoW mechanism.