Bitcoin killed the BIP-110 fork in two blocks. Now its backers want out entirely. They are targeting September 1 for a proof-of-work change that would abandon Bitcoin’s miners and launch a separate coin.
The pivot turns a failed rule change into something much bigger. A movement that wanted to clean up Bitcoin now wants to leave it.
A Breakaway Coin by September 1?
BIP-110’s supporters spent the weekend watching their chain freeze. By Sunday, the proposal’s pseudonymous author, Dathon Ohm, had recast the defeat as an attack.
“Update: it appears that the large mining pools have colluded to turn Bitcoin from money into a toxic data dumping ground by executing a secret hardfork against the Bitcoin node network. The community is working on proposal for a proof-of-work change to fire the miners,” wrote Ohm.
Luke Dashjr went further. The Bitcoin Knots maintainer and OCEAN pool co-founder sits at the center of the movement. Asked about timing, he suggested September 1, the day BIP-110 would have activated.
September 1 Suggestions from Luke. Source: Discord
A proof-of-work change swaps the puzzle that secures the chain. Every existing Bitcoin mining machine becomes useless on the new coin overnight. That ends any claim to a soft fork. It creates a rival coin living or dying on its own.
History offers a warning here. Bitcoin Cash broke away in 2017 with far more support and kept Bitcoin’s mining algorithm. Today, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) trades near $215, about 0.3% of Bitcoin’s price, per BeInCrypto data.
The escalation follows a failure so fast it stunned even critics. BIP-110 proposed a temporary soft fork capping data sizes in transactions. The goal was to push Ordinals inscriptions and similar non-money content out of blocks.
The bar for activation was already low. Supporters cut the usual 95% miner approval threshold to 55%. Support still peaked at just 2.53%.
Re: BIP 110 post mortem.
Miners don't control Bitcoin, and pools don't control miners. Pools are payout coordinators for thousands of individual operators who can repoint hashrate elsewhere in ten minutes. A pool signaling against its miners' interests just loses the hashrate.… pic.twitter.com/kEeSdcDqa8
Then mandatory signaling began at block 961,632. Nodes enforcing the rules, shipped in Bitcoin Knots rather than Bitcoin Core, started rejecting blocks that did not signal. The network split exactly along the lines BeInCrypto flagged in its pre-fork holder warning.
Roughnecks, a small mining group on OCEAN’s platform, mined the fork’s only two blocks. It gave up on August 9 and told other miners to stop.
Update for OCEAN miners:
We want to clarify yesterday’s activity around the BIP-110 and non-BIP-110 mining options.
For roughly 18 hours, some miners using OCEAN’s Stratum templates may have believed they were mining on the non-BIP-110 chain while their hashrate was directed to… https://t.co/thI7zqGn2W
Signaling in the current period sits at 0.00%. Worse, the fork kept Bitcoin’s full mining difficulty with almost no hashrate behind it. Each new block could take many hours.
Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor, one of the proposal’s loudest critics, framed the outcome as proof the system works.
“Bitcoin worked exactly as designed. BIP-110 was free to fork, and the network was free not to follow. The result was decisive: about 99.85% of Bitcoin’s hashpower stayed with Bitcoin. The BIP-110 branch mined only two blocks and is already more than 80 blocks behind,” he wrote.
The gap has tripled since his post. Markets shrugged throughout. Bitcoin (BTC) trades near $64,722, up 0.6% in the past day, per BeInCrypto data.
Fallout Hits Dashjr and OCEAN
The wreckage now centers on one man. Murch, a Bitcoin Core contributor, filed a motion to strip Dashjr of his BIP Editor role. The motion accuses him of using editorial privileges to favor BIP-110 and cites conflict-of-interest concerns.
Since it will likely land here on Twitter soon anyway: I have recommended the removal of Luke Dashjr from the BIP Editors to the mailing list. pic.twitter.com/95TfZoccIN
Dashjr did not immediately respond to BeInCrypto’s request for comment.
However, critics of the move argue it punishes an opinion rather than real process abuse. The fight revives a 12-year-old dispute over Dashjr’s place in the ecosystem.
His pool is in worse shape. OCEAN admitted it routed some customers’ hashrate to the minority chain for about 18 hours without clear consent. Its reported hashrate has since collapsed 96%. Angry miners now demand OCEAN leadership changes over the breach.
The fork question is closed. The harder ones are not. Bitcoin’s spam debate remains unresolved, and September 1 is now a live deadline. Whether a breakaway coin actually appears by then will show how far BIP-110’s backers are willing to go.
