Bitcoin miner rejects BIP-110 despite Ocean pool backing
In brief
- Simple Mining produced block 961,634 without signaling BIP-110 support, defying Ocean pool's default stance
- DATUM protocol allowed individual miner choice despite Ocean's July switch to signal BIP-110 by default
- BIP-110 support peaked at 2.6% and needed 55% to activate; minority fork fell 200+ blocks behind
The split and the stall
BIP-110 is a proposal to stop people storing pictures, text and other non-financial data inside bitcoin transactions for a year. Ocean, the pool Simple Mining mines with, had switched miners to signal for BIP-110 by default in July and accounted for nearly all of the proposal's mining support.
But Simple Mining went the other way. The miner produced block 961,634 on the main chain, two blocks past where BIP-110 supporters had forked off. Computers running BIP-110 software began rejecting blocks that did not carry its signal at block 961,632. The BIP-110 minority branch produced blocks 961,632 and 961,633 before stalling, while the main chain kept producing blocks roughly every ten minutes.
The gap widened fast. By Monday the main chain was at block 961,725, putting the BIP-110 branch more than 200 blocks behind.
Why DATUM mattered
DATUM, an Ocean protocol that gives individual miners control over the blocks they produce, made Simple Mining's independence possible. Without it, the miner would have been locked into Ocean's default BIP-110 signal. Instead, Simple Mining could stake its own block on the main chain.
"Hashrate is a vote you cannot fake, and we decided the proposal wasn't worth following" — Simple Mining
The numbers didn't add up
Support for BIP-110 peaked at 2.6% while the proposal needed 55% to pass. Ocean accounted for nearly all of that support before Simple Mining's split. The episode underscored a basic tension in Bitcoin: even when a pool signals support for a proposal, individual miners retain the ability to dissent if they control their own block production.
Simple Mining's choice reflected the wider lack of appetite for BIP-110. The fork collapsed not because of technical failure but because hashrate voted no.
Frequently asked questions
What is BIP-110 and why did it matter?
BIP-110 is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal to stop people from storing pictures, text, and other non-financial data inside bitcoin transactions for a year. It needed 55% miner support to activate but only reached 2.6% at its peak.
How did Simple Mining reject BIP-110 while mining through Ocean?
Simple Mining used DATUM, an Ocean protocol that gives individual miners control over the blocks they produce while still contributing computing power to the pool. This allowed the miner to independently choose not to signal for BIP-110.
What happened to the BIP-110 fork?
The BIP-110 minority branch produced only two blocks (961,632 and 961,633) before stalling. By Monday, the main chain had advanced to block 961,725, leaving the BIP-110 fork more than 200 blocks behind.
