Intelligence Brief
Simple Mining constructed Bitcoin block 961,634 on the dominant chain without signalling support for BIP-110, despite operating through Ocean, the pool most closely associated with the proposal.
Ocean’s DATUM protocol allows participating miners to create their own block templates instead of automatically accepting the pool operator’s policy. Simple Mining used that capability to reject the BIP-110 rules for its block.
The decision matters because Ocean had enabled BIP-110 support by default. Pool-level statistics could therefore overstate support if individual miners independently choose the established Bitcoin chain.
We mined block 961,634 using Ocean’s DATUM protocol.
The block didn’t signal support for BIP-110.
Support peaked at 2.6% while the proposal needed 55%.
Hashrate is a vote you cannot fake, and we decided the proposal wasn’t worth following.
Ocean’s DATUM protocol gave us the… https://t.co/YVUeHr2oJ4 pic.twitter.com/wYYq20dsam
— Simple Mining (@simpleminingio) August 9, 2026
BIP-110 supporters had produced two blocks on a minority branch. By the time of the report, the dominant chain had moved more than 200 blocks ahead while the minority branch remained stalled.
The gap confirms that the minority chain lacked enough active hash power to maintain competitive block production at that time. It does not make resumption impossible. Additional miners could still direct computing power towards the branch.
Strategic Assessment
Bitcoin’s relevant unit of support is the miner choosing rules, not merely the pool transporting work. DATUM separates those decisions and makes headline pool support less reliable as a measure of economic consensus.
Simple Mining benefits from retaining policy control while using Ocean’s infrastructure. BIP-110 supporters carry the strategic loss because their principal pool cannot guarantee that connected miners will follow its default.
The minority branch also faces a compounding problem. Slow blocks reduce usability and weaken the incentive for exchanges, wallets and businesses to build support.
