USDBIP-110 Fork Stalls as OCEAN Fallout Deepens
Miner Routing Error and Governance Fight Expand Beyond Failed Activation
TL;DR
- Bitcoin’s BIP-110 minority chain stalled almost immediately after failing to win broad miner support.
- OCEAN later acknowledged routing some miners to the minority chain despite their selecting another option and promised compensation.
- BIP-110 supporters responded by discussing a proof-of-work change as Luke Dashjr faced separate fallout at OCEAN and among Bitcoin Improvement Proposal editors.
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Bitcoin’s BIP-110 effort failed to secure enough miner support before splitting from the dominant Bitcoin network, leaving its minority chain stalled after only two blocks and hundreds of blocks behind while supporters moved toward a more disruptive proof-of-work change. The fallout also spread to mining pool OCEAN, which acknowledged an approximately 18-hour routing problem affecting miners, and to Luke Dashjr, who was removed as a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal editor and later stepped back from senior OCEAN duties.
BIP-110 was proposed as a temporary, one-year Bitcoin soft fork intended to restrict non-financial data stored in Bitcoin transactions, including Ordinals-style images, text and other inscriptions. The proposal would cap certain data fields at 256 bytes, limit OP_RETURN outputs to 83 bytes and restrict certain Taproot functions. Supporters included Dashjr, a Bitcoin Knots maintainer and OCEAN co-founder, while opponents argued that Bitcoin’s existing node policies and fee market should determine how valid blockspace is used.
The proposal required 55% miner signaling during a 2,016-block activation window, equivalent to 1,109 signaling blocks. Supporters had lowered the activation threshold from the 95% level associated with some previous soft-fork processes, but BIP-110 still received only 51 signaling blocks, or 2.53%, during its final signaling period. Foundry Digital, AntPool, ViaBTC and F2Pool, which together represented more than 70% of Bitcoin’s hashrate, did not signal support, with most of the limited backing coming through OCEAN.
Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor said on Aug. 1, 2026, that the voluntary activation route had already failed. “The 55% voluntary threshold is now mathematically unreachable this period. This is not miner consensus,” Saylor said.
BIP-110 nevertheless contained another enforcement path. Starting at block 961,632, nodes running software that enforced the proposal would reject blocks that failed to carry the required signal even though the voluntary activation threshold had not been reached. The enforcement code was distributed through Bitcoin Knots rather than Bitcoin Core, allowing participating nodes to follow a separate chain when miners on the dominant network continued producing non-signaling blocks.
Bitcoin Splits and the Minority Chain Stops
Bitcoin split on Aug. 8, 2026, when AntPool mined a non-signaling block on the dominant chain and the pseudonymous mining group Roughnecks produced a competing signaling block through OCEAN. Because the blocks contained different transactions and BIP-110 nodes rejected the AntPool block, the networks diverged.
The minority chain fell behind almost immediately. One early snapshot showed the dominant network at block 961,640 while the BIP-110 branch remained at block 961,633, a seven-block gap, while another observation put the shortfall at more than 12 blocks within hours. The fork also inherited Bitcoin’s mining difficulty of approximately 127.48 trillion, leaving it with the same proof-of-work burden as the dominant network despite having only a fraction of its computing power.
Roughnecks mined the BIP-110 chain’s only two blocks before suspending operations on Aug. 9 and initially urging other miners to stop. The decision left the minority branch frozen as Bitcoin continued adding blocks.
Dylan LeClair said the outcome demonstrated that individual miners could move their computing power away from pools that took positions contrary to their interests. “Miners don't control Bitcoin, and pools don't control miners. Pools are payout coordinators for thousands of individual operators who can repoint hashrate elsewhere in ten minutes. A pool signaling against its miners' interests just loses the hashrate,” LeClair said.
Saylor said roughly 99.85% of Bitcoin’s hashpower remained on the dominant network, leaving approximately 0.15% on the BIP-110 branch. “Bitcoin worked exactly as designed. BIP-110 was free to fork, and the network was free not to follow. The result was decisive: about 99.85% of Bitcoin’s hashpower stayed with Bitcoin. The BIP-110 branch mined only two blocks and is already more than 80 blocks behind,” Saylor said.
At that estimated hashpower share, Saylor said the minority chain could require about 25 years to reach its first difficulty adjustment. “Consensus is earned, not declared,” he said, arguing that miners, exchanges, custodians, wallets, holders and other economic infrastructure had overwhelmingly remained with the dominant network.
David Bailey, CEO of Bitcoin treasury company Nakamoto, called BIP-110 the least popular and most inconsequential soft fork ever attempted and said its supporters should reflect on why the activation failed.
The economics of the fork also worked against miners. Because both chains inherited the same difficulty, mining the minority branch required comparable computational work while producing an asset with no established market, exchange listing or buyers. The branch could not reduce that difficulty until completing the required difficulty period.
By an Aug. 11 snapshot, the BIP-110 chain was still sitting at block 961,633 while Bitcoin had advanced to block 961,959, leaving the fork 326 blocks behind. The minority network had effectively remained idle while Bitcoin produced more than 300 additional blocks.
The estimated timeline for the minority chain’s difficulty adjustment deteriorated rapidly as block production stopped. A live monitor put the adjustment about 6.3 years away on Aug. 11, compared with an estimate of roughly 350 days on the preceding Sunday. Because the calculation reflected recent block times, each additional idle period extended the estimate. Bitcoin’s own next difficulty adjustment was expected in about 12 days at that point.
Nick Ruck, director of LVRG Research, said the outcome showed how difficult it was for a contentious fork to operate without broad hashpower support. “The BIP-110 experiment has effectively collapsed after producing only two blocks and falling behind the main chain,” Ruck said, adding that Bitcoin’s security and progress remained tied to the overwhelming majority of mining power. Contentious rule changes without broad support from miners and the wider economy are “destined to stall as minority forks,” he said.
Himanshu Sahay, co-founder of Arch, urged more caution. “I think it is still too early to draw any firm conclusions from the initial block production,” Sahay said, arguing that a viable fork requires coordination among miners, developers and the broader ecosystem.
Bitcoin price action showed little immediate response to the split. An Aug. 10 snapshot placed the Bitcoin price around $65,000, nearly 49% below an approximately $126,000 all-time high cited alongside that figure.
The episode was also compared with earlier Bitcoin forks and upgrades. Bitcoin Cash separated from Bitcoin in 2017 with materially greater support and retained the same mining algorithm, yet was trading around $215. Taproot, by contrast, activated in November 2021 at block 709,632 after broad support and did not leave a lasting minority chain.
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BIP-110 Backers Push a Proof-of-Work Change
The dispute moved beyond the original soft-fork design on Aug. 10 as BIP-110 supporters began discussing changing Bitcoin’s proof-of-work algorithm on their branch.
Dathon Ohm, the proposal’s author, accused the dominant mining pools of deliberately undermining the network recognized by BIP-110 supporters. “Update: it appears that the large mining pools have colluded to turn Bitcoin from money into a toxic data dumping ground by executing a secret hardfork against the Bitcoin node network. The community is working on proposal for a proof-of-work change to fire the miners,” Ohm said.
Dashjr supported the idea, arguing that the opposition came from a small group. “There’s just a tiny few bad actors attacking it. PoW change eliminates their threat,” he said.
Dashjr also suggested Sept. 1, 2026, the date on which BIP-110 would originally have activated, as a possible target for a proof-of-work transition.
Such a change would go well beyond the original soft fork because existing Bitcoin miners rely on specialized SHA-256 equipment. An incompatible algorithm would create a separate mining environment and require supporters to establish their own miner base, wallets, exchanges, liquidity and users. Existing Bitcoin mining machines would not be able to mine the new proof-of-work system under that approach.
Roughnecks reversed its earlier decision to stop mining and said it planned to resume work from the stalled chain tip while the proof-of-work proposal was considered. “We have decided to resume mining ASAP on the stalled chain tip,” Roughnecks said, adding that it would continue until a “sensible POW change” could replace the mining pools it blamed for abandoning the branch.
Roughnecks also said miners on the dominant network had “forked themselves off the network” and characterized Bitcoin Knots-RDTS as Bitcoin’s reference client, a position rejected by opponents of BIP-110. Another Aug. 10 snapshot showed the dominant chain more than 240 blocks ahead while BIP-110 signaling stood at 0.00%.
The Sept. 1 discussion remained a proposed technical and political target rather than an established launch event. The material described supporters working on a proof-of-work proposal and Roughnecks preparing to resume mining, rather than documenting an already operating replacement mining system.
OCEAN Admits Miner Routing Error
OCEAN’s role in the split triggered a separate controversy after the mining pool acknowledged that some miners were directed to the BIP-110 branch even though they believed they had selected a different option.
OCEAN said some miners using its Stratum templates were affected for roughly 18 hours. Those operators believed they were contributing to the non-BIP-110 chain, but their machines were instead directed to the minority branch.
The episode attracted particular scrutiny because OCEAN had promoted greater miner control over block templates. Critics argued that a pool should not redirect computing power toward a contentious chain without explicit authorization.
OCEAN had introduced two Stratum endpoints on July 8 ahead of the split. The BIP-110 endpoint used bip110.mine.ocean.xyz on port 3110, while the non-signaling option used no-signal.mine.ocean.xyz on port 3000. The setup was intended to give miners an explicit choice between the competing approaches.
Developer Peter Todd criticized the default configuration and raised concerns that unassigned DATUM hashpower could be directed toward the BIP-110 branch. The disclosure also prompted an X user to characterize the episode as a hashrate “hijack” and call for those responsible to be removed.
Blockstream CEO Adam Back criticized the incident and said the financial damage should be borne by Dashjr. OCEAN “should take that out of @lukedashjr's salary,” Back said on Aug. 10.
Back had previously called the BIP-110 campaign “idiocracy,” while Saylor had warned that the proposal could establish a dangerous precedent for Bitcoin governance.
OCEAN’s reported hashrate fell by more than 96% amid the backlash. The decline coincided with the controversy, though the supplied information did not establish that the routing problem caused the entire reduction.
OCEAN later promised to compensate affected miners based on what they would have earned on the non-BIP-110 chain during the affected period. “Approximately 0.3 BTC will be distributed, with payments completed within the next 72 hours. We’ll publish the transaction details once the payments are sent,” OCEAN said.
The pool restored its default endpoint to the non-BIP-110 chain while continuing to make both mining options available for operators who wanted to choose explicitly.
Dashjr Removed as BIP Editor
The fork also triggered a governance dispute over Dashjr’s role as a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal editor.
BIP editor Mark “Murch” Erhardt proposed Dashjr’s removal on Aug. 9, accusing him of applying the editorial process inconsistently while advocating BIP-110. Erhardt said Dashjr had attempted to assign the proposal a BIP number before customary mailing-list discussion and later merged an update within minutes of the related pull request being opened.
The removal proposal became GitHub pull request 2248. Matt Corallo supported the motion, fellow BIP editor Olaoluwa Osuntokun formally seconded it, and Jonas Nick also backed Dashjr’s removal, saying BIP editors should apply the process neutrally. Antoine Riard said Dashjr should step aside at least temporarily but cautioned that the BIP process did not provide a clear procedure for forcibly removing an editor.
Erhardt also pointed to Dashjr’s limited recent participation in routine editorial work. “The latter is particularly notable given that Luke has otherwise made hardly any contributions to the day-to-day work of the BIP Editors since the additional editors began serving in April 2024: he left fewer than 1% of the BIP Editor comments in the repository since then, and the merge action of this PR was his first since May 2024,” Bitcoin developer Mark Erhardt wrote.
Critics of the removal effort argued that Dashjr risked being punished for his views rather than proven procedural abuse, reviving a dispute over his role in the Bitcoin ecosystem that one account traced back about 12 years.
Dashjr initially described the accusations as false and later called his removal “an abuse of power.” By Aug. 11, Dashjr had been removed from the BIP editorial position.
Dashjr also said he would take a sabbatical from his positions as chair and chief technology officer of OCEAN and turn his “immediate focus to working Bitcoin and open-source projects to support Bitcoin.”
The documented sequence left the original BIP-110 activation unsuccessful while its supporters pursued a different route. The voluntary signaling process failed, the enforced minority branch stopped after its initial blocks, OCEAN faced miner backlash over its chain-routing configuration, and the dispute widened into separate fights over mining governance, the BIP editorial process and a potential proof-of-work replacement.
This article has been refined and enhanced by ChatGPT.
