BIP-110 Rejected by Miner as Ocean Pool Signals Fail
A Bitcoin miner from Simple Mining used Ocean’s DATUM pool tooling but declined to signal support for the controversial BIP-110 soft-fork.
Simple Mining mined block 961,634 on the main Bitcoin chain, two blocks after BIP-110 supporters broke away. The firm said its mined block did not include the BIP-110 signal and argued that “hashrate is a vote you cannot fake.”
The data behind the split matters: BIP-110 support peaked at about 2.6% of hashrate, far below the 55% threshold it sought to reach for restricting non-financial data in transactions for a year.
After BIP-110 nodes began rejecting blocks without the signal at height 961,632, the forked chain produced only two blocks (961,632 and 961,633) before stalling. Meanwhile, the dominant Bitcoin chain advanced by more than 200 blocks to around 961,725.
Why the pool involvement is notable: Ocean had switched miners to BIP-110 signalling by default in July, yet DATUM allowed individual miners to opt out. As a result, Ocean appeared on both sides of the weekend split—one miner produced the first BIP-110-accepted block, while Simple Mining extended the main chain without the BIP-110 signal.
Neutral
This is unlikely to materially change Bitcoin’s market trajectory. The BIP-110 attempt is already failing on-chain: support peaked near 2.6% versus the 55% target, and the fork quickly stalled after non-signalling blocks were rejected. That pattern typically limits sustained uncertainty because miners and nodes converge toward the dominant chain.
For traders, the immediate impact is more about sentiment than fundamentals. Weekend fork headlines can cause short-lived volatility, but the numbers here (small hash support and rapid stalling) point to low risk of a long-lived chain split. Historically, controversial protocol changes that never reach a meaningful consensus threshold tend to fade without a lasting effect on BTC liquidity or risk premia.
Short-term: potential intraday headlines/volatility around consensus narratives, especially among traders monitoring mining signals.
Long-term: neutral, as the dominant chain advanced by 200+ blocks while the BIP-110 branch produced only two blocks, suggesting the market will likely treat BIP-110 as a failed or paused effort rather than an imminent rule change.