Foundry Wants Its Miners to Settle the Debate: Block, Boycott, or Just Vote Already 🗳️

Foundry USA, the world's largest Bitcoin mining pool, began asking its mining customers to cast votes on how the pool should signal for Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110, a soft fork that would reduce the amount of data storable in Bitcoin transactions and limit non-monetary uses of the network such as Ordinals. The pool also released educational materials describing the proposal and stated that voting will close at Bitcoin block 961,632, expected in early August. Foundry's mining clients received email links through which they can submit their votes.

BIP-110 has emerged as one of the most actively debated proposals in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Blockstream CEO Adam Back publicly opposed the measure, stating that BIP-110 could be used to freeze user funds. Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor also criticized the proposal, asserting that it could invalidate ordinary transactions on the Bitcoin network. Cointelegraph reported that it had reached out to Foundry for comment on the voting process.

Foundry accounts for approximately 23.8% of the total hashrate on the $BTC network, according to data provider Hashrate Index, giving the pool's signaling decision meaningful influence over how the proposal is received by the broader mining community. The voting mechanism allows individual miners who direct hashrate to Foundry to weigh in on the pool's stance ahead of the early August deadline.

The proposal arrives at a moment when Bitcoin developers and industry figures remain divided over the network's tolerance for non-financial use cases, with Ordinals and similar inscriptions frequently cited in the debate over block space and transaction policy. Separate coverage of proposed protocol changes, such as those outlined in BIP-360 addressing quantum-resistance considerations, illustrates the breadth of active development work surrounding $BTC.

Foundry's move formalizes a question that has previously played out largely in social media exchanges, converting commentary from figures including Back and Saylor into a concrete ballot item for the pool's customer base. The result of the vote at block 961,632 will determine how Foundry's signaling aligns with or against BIP-110 as the wider Bitcoin community continues to evaluate the proposal.