Roughnecks Abandons BIP-110 Mining Amid Ocean Hasrate Collapse
Roughnecks, the mining group behind the BIP-110 minority chain on Bitcoin, has stopped mining under its name. The decision was made after producing only two blocks since the split from Bitcoin's main network.
The move comes as Ocean's displayed hashrate collapsed by over 96%, from about 36 EH/s to 1.25 EH/s. This drastic decline in hashrate makes it impractical for miners to continue building the minority chain under current conditions, according to Roughnecks.
BIP-110 was designed to temporarily restrict certain methods used to place non-financial data inside Bitcoin transactions. However, miner support never reached the required 55% threshold, and nodes enforcing the proposal began rejecting non-signaling blocks at height 961,632.
The minority chain inherited Bitcoin's existing mining difficulty of roughly 127 trillion, making it difficult for BIP-110 miners to find a valid block. Without enough hashrate, confirmations on the minority chain slowed dramatically, and its usefulness deteriorated.