Bitcoin Miner Signals BIP-110 Rejection Despite Pool Support

A Bitcoin miner has rejected BIP-110 despite mining through Ocean, the pool that had been backing the proposal by default.

Simple Mining used Ocean’s DATUM protocol to make an independent choice over its block. The system allows miners to determine their own block contents and signaling while still using the pool’s infrastructure and sharing in its rewards.

The company said it mined block 961,634 on Bitcoin’s main chain Sunday, two blocks after BIP-110 supporters moved onto a separate branch.

Simple Mining said the block did not carry a BIP-110 signal. The company argued that hashrate is a direct measure of miner support and said it saw little reason to follow the proposal, which had reached only about 2.6% support at its peak, compared with the 55% threshold required.

The decision is notable because Ocean began signaling for BIP-110 by default in July. Before the split, almost all of the proposal’s limited miner support came from the pool.

BIP-110, or Bitcoin Improvement Proposal-110, seeks to limit the storage of non-financial material, including images and text, in Bitcoin transactions for a year.

Simple Mining could reject the proposal because of DATUM, Ocean’s protocol for giving individual miners control over block production. Miners can use their own Bitcoin software and construct their own blocks while continuing to direct hashpower through Ocean and receive a portion of the pool’s payouts.

Traditional mining pools typically aggregate miners’ computing power and handle block construction. They generally determine which transactions are included and what signaling their blocks contain.

DATUM shifts those decisions toward the individual miner.

Simple Mining used that control to produce block 961,634 without the BIP-110 signal. It said the Bitcoin chain continued through its block.

The episode also shows how miners connected to Ocean ended up supporting both sides of the weekend split. According to Mempool, an Ocean-linked miner produced the first block accepted by the BIP-110 chain on Saturday. Simple Mining later mined through the same pool but chose not to support the proposal, producing a block that stayed on Bitcoin’s main chain.

Nodes running BIP-110 began rejecting blocks that lacked its signal at block 961,632. At the time, support had peaked at roughly 2.6%, far below the 55% needed.

The minority chain then stalled after producing blocks 961,632 and 961,633, while the main network continued generating blocks at approximately 10-minute intervals.

By Monday, the main chain had advanced to block 961,725, leaving the BIP-110 branch more than 200 blocks behind.

The episode highlights how Ocean’s default position does not necessarily dictate the choices of every miner using its infrastructure, particularly when protocols such as DATUM allow operators to control their own blocks.