Bitcoin mining pool OCEAN acknowledged that a configuration error inadvertently directed a portion of its miners’ hash rate to the BIP‑110 chain for approximately 18 hours, and has committed to compensating affected users. The pool plans to pay roughly 0.3 BTC per miner, based on the earnings they would have reasonably expected while mining on the legacy Bitcoin chain during the incident. OCEAN restored the default connection to the main chain and now lets miners manually choose between chains.
Simultaneously, the BIP‑110 soft fork proposal—designed to temporarily restrict non‑payment data like inscriptions and Runes—has effectively stalled after failing to gain sufficient hashrate. Simple Mining, operating through OCEAN’s DATUM protocol, mined block 961,634 on Bitcoin’s main chain without signaling support for BIP‑110. Support for the proposal peaked at about 2.6% of total hashrate, far below the 55% threshold required before mandatory signaling rules would have taken effect.
At block 961,632, nodes running the proposal began rejecting non‑signaling blocks, creating a minority branch. That branch produced only two blocks (961,632 and 961,633) before grinding to a halt, while Bitcoin’s dominant chain added over 200 blocks and rapidly widened the gap. Both chains inherited the same 127.48T mining difficulty, but the BIP‑110 side lacked the computing power to find new blocks at a viable pace. Supporter Matthew Kratter noted that a massive change would be needed for the fork to catch up, and Roughnecks later asked miners on the BIP‑110 chain to pause operations until further notice.
The episode highlights operational risks when pools experiment with alternative configurations without clear communication, and underscores that protocol changes still depend on real‑world consensus from miners, economic nodes, and exchanges.
