A Bitcoin miner has rejected BIP-110 despite operating through Ocean, a mining pool that had been configured to support the proposal by default.
Simple Mining used Ocean’s DATUM protocol to make its own decision on the contents and signaling of its block. The technology allows individual miners to override the pool’s default preferences while continuing to contribute hashpower and receive mining rewards through the pool.
On Sunday, Simple Mining said it mined Bitcoin block 961,634 on the network’s main chain, shortly after BIP-110 supporters had split onto a separate chain.
The company said it intentionally left out the BIP-110 signal, arguing that mining power provides a genuine measure of support. At its peak, the proposal had attracted only 2.6% of Bitcoin’s hashrate, far below the 55% threshold required for activation.
Simple Mining’s decision is notable because Ocean had begun signaling for BIP-110 automatically in July. Before the split, Ocean represented almost all of the limited mining power supporting the proposal.
BIP-110 is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal designed to restrict the use of Bitcoin transactions for storing non-financial information, such as images and text, for a one-year period.
The miner was able to take a different position because of DATUM. Unlike conventional pool arrangements, where the pool typically decides which transactions and signaling information appear in a block, DATUM allows individual miners to construct blocks using their own Bitcoin software.
Mining pools normally bring together hashpower from multiple operators to increase the frequency of block discoveries and distribute the rewards. This arrangement generally gives the pool significant influence over block contents.
DATUM shifts that control toward the individual mining operator while preserving the economic relationship with the pool.
Simple Mining used that feature to mine block 961,634 without signaling support for BIP-110. The company said the main chain continued through its block.
The incident also shows how Ocean-backed miners ended up supporting both sides of the weekend chain split. According to Mempool, a miner connected to Ocean mined the first block accepted by the BIP-110 chain on Saturday. Simple Mining later mined through Ocean but rejected the proposal, producing a block that remained on Bitcoin’s main chain.
At block 961,632, nodes running BIP-110 software began rejecting blocks that did not include the proposal’s signal. Support had peaked at roughly 2.6%, well below the required 55%.
The minority chain managed to mine only blocks 961,632 and 961,633 before stalling. The main Bitcoin chain, meanwhile, continued producing blocks at its normal pace of roughly one every 10 minutes.
By Monday, the main chain had reached block 961,725, leaving the BIP-110 branch more than 200 blocks behind.
The episode demonstrates that a pool’s default signaling policy does not necessarily represent the position of every miner operating through it. DATUM gave Simple Mining the ability to make its own choice while remaining part of Ocean’s mining operation.
