Bitcoin Miner Rejects BIP-110 Despite Mining Through Ocean Pool

A Bitcoin miner, Simple Mining, has chosen not to back BIP-110, a proposal to stop storing non-financial data in Bitcoin transactions for a year. Despite mining through the Ocean pool, which had switched miners to signal support for BIP-110 by default in July, Simple Mining used its own protocol called DATUM to decide what went into block 961,634.

DATUM allows individual miners to control the blocks they produce and choose their own software. Simple Mining chose not to include the BIP-110 signal in its block, which led to the chain extending on that block. This decision is notable because Ocean had accounted for nearly all of the proposal's small amount of mining support before the split.

BIP-110 supporters began rejecting blocks without their signal at block 961,632, after miner support peaked at about 2.6%, far below the 55% needed. The minority branch has struggled since, producing only two blocks before stalling, while Bitcoin continued to produce blocks roughly every ten minutes.

The main chain is now at 961,725, putting the BIP-110 branch more than 200 blocks behind.