Roughnecks, the mining group responsible for the only two blocks on Bitcoin’s new BIP-110 minority chain, has stopped mining under its name and urged others to stand down as the breakaway network remains stuck just two blocks beyond its split from Bitcoin.
Key Takeaways
Roughnecks stopped BIP-110 mining Aug. 9 after producing the fork’s only 2 blocks.Ocean hashrate fell from about 36 EH/s to 1.25 EH/s as the BIP-110 chain stalled.BIP-110 now needs new hashrate or another strategy after Roughnecks told miners to halt.Ocean had become the central mining venue associated with BIP-110 signaling, particularly through its DATUM system, which lets individual miners construct their own block templates and choose whether to signal the proposal.
Bitcoin’s Difficulty Became the Minority Chain’s TrapDifficulty determines how hard miners must work, on average, to find a valid block. Bitcoin normally adjusts that difficulty every 2,016 blocks to keep block production near one block every 10 minutes. A minority chain carrying only a tiny sliver of Bitcoin’s former hashrate does not receive an immediate discount. It must keep wrestling with the same difficulty until it reaches another adjustment point.
That created a punishing feedback loop for BIP-110 miners. Less hashrate meant blocks arrived dramatically slower, but slower blocks also meant reaching the next 2,016-block difficulty adjustment became increasingly distant. Monitors projected that completing the necessary period could take hundreds of days under severely reduced mining power.
BIP-110 Never Won the Hashrate BattleBIP-110, formally called the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork, was designed to temporarily restrict several methods used to place non-financial data inside Bitcoin transactions. Supporters argued those techniques, including Ordinals-related activity and large data payloads, increased storage and validation burdens while pulling Bitcoin away from its primary monetary purpose.
The proposal’s activation design became the decisive fault line. BIP-110 sought 55% miner signaling during a 2,016-block difficulty period. When that threshold failed, nodes enforcing the proposal were programmed to begin rejecting non-signaling blocks at height 961,632. Miner support never came close, topping out around 2.5% to 2.6% before the mandatory window began.
“They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism.”
Two Blocks Expose the Economics of a Minority ForkThe result offers a stark demonstration of what happens when node rules and mining economics diverge. Software can reject blocks according to a different rule set, but those nodes still need miners willing to spend electricity and computing resources building the alternative chain. Without enough hashrate, confirmations slow dramatically and the chain’s usefulness deteriorates.
For users running BIP-110-enforcing software, the immediate problem is practical rather than philosophical. Their nodes are following a chain that has produced only two blocks since the split. Because both chains recognize many of the same transactions, users also face potential replay complications if coins are spent without deliberately separating activity between the two networks.
The next question is whether anyone replaces Roughnecks as a meaningful source of mining power. As of the group’s announcement, BIP-110 had not locked in or activated its transaction restrictions on Bitcoin’s dominant chain, Roughnecks had stopped operating under its name, Ocean’s displayed hashrate had fallen sharply and the minority fork remained stranded at two blocks.
