One miner said nope to BIP-110 — and Ocean's own tool let him do it 🪨

A bitcoin miner running through Ocean pool produced block 961,634 on the main chain without signaling support for BIP-110, using Ocean's DATUM protocol to override the pool's default position. Simple Mining announced the block on X, writing: "Hashrate is a vote you cannot fake, and we decided the proposal wasn't worth following." The block came two heights after BIP-110 nodes began rejecting non-signaling blocks at height 961,632, breaking the network into two chains.

BIP-110, or Bitcoin Improvement Proposal-110, sought to restrict non-financial data in bitcoin transactions for one year and required 55% hashrate support to activate. Actual support peaked at about 2.6%, and Ocean had been providing nearly all of it after switching its miners to signal for the proposal by default in July. The BIP-110 chain produced just two blocks before stalling, while the main $BTC chain advanced more than 200 blocks ahead.

DATUM is an Ocean protocol that lets individual miners build their own block templates and choose which transactions and software signals they include, rather than having the pool decide. Mining pools typically aggregate hashrate from many operators and construct the blocks themselves, distributing rewards proportionally. Simple Mining's decision showed that even when a pool's default settings favor a proposal, the underlying hashrate can dissent block by block.

The episode highlighted the gap between pool-level signaling and the actual views of the hashrate operators connecting to it. Ocean had accounted for nearly all of BIP-110's limited support, meaning a single dissenting miner inside the pool could visibly tip the balance of which chain advanced. Simple Mining framed the choice as a direct exercise of miner sovereignty enabled by DATUM, with the chain itself serving as the tally of votes cast.