Luke Dashjr, Comms Chief Step Away From Dorsey-Backed Mining Pool Ocean

Luke Dashjr is taking a sabbatical from his leadership roles at the Jack Dorsey-backed bitcoin mining pool Ocean as he turns his attention toward the BIP-110 fork and open-source development, just as developers behind the stalled minority chain begin organizing an aggressive proof-of-work (PoW) overhaul designed to revive their fork.

Bitcoin Mechanic, Ocean’s head of communications, replied “Me too!”, indicating he is also taking a sabbatical. Both described their moves as temporary leaves rather than permanent resignations.

The minority chain revival’s scope is significant. Developers classified a redesigned block header, a deliberately oversized difficulty reset, and replay protection as essential work. Other ideas tossed around Discord discussions include a larger nonce space for miners, a 64-bit block timestamp, a possible block-withholding fix, and a temporary reduction in block size to 600 kiloweight units during RDTS. Fixes for timewarp and timejacking attacks were also discussed, though several changes remain optional and could be dropped.

A draft candidate list discussed during the meeting included BLAKE2b-256, SHA3x, BLAKE2s, Scrypt, BLAKE3x2 and Eaglesong. Dashjr explained that the group planned to publish a cryptographic hash of the secret mapping first, then use a Bitcoin block produced after 14:00 UTC the following day to determine the selection. Publishing the hash beforehand would allow observers to later verify that developers had not changed the mapping after seeing the block.

“Current plan is later today we announce with blockhash-to-algo mapping HASH, tomorrow 14:00 UTC we publish mapping as soon as there’s a corecoin block to compare to it,” Dashjr told the development channel on Discord. When Guida asked whether the most recent block before 14:00 UTC would determine the algorithm, Dashjr clarified that it would be the next block afterward.

Difficulty is another priority because developers have already seen what happens when a minority fork inherits mining conditions designed for Bitcoin’s enormous industrial hashpower.

That conviction now collides with the measurable state of the networks. The overwhelmingly dominant Bitcoin chain continues producing blocks under SHA-256d, while the BIP-110 branch has struggled to produce a third block. Inside the Knots development discussion, even participants sympathetic to the project recognized the optics and technical stakes. One warned that expanding the redesign too far could change the story from choosing a new algorithm to:

“They made a bunch of changes and think they’re Bitcoin.”

What happens next could determine whether BIP-110 remains a stranded two-block minority fork or becomes a substantially different network. Developers are no longer merely discussing a hypothetical escape from Bitcoin’s miners. They are dividing up consensus work, designing replay protection, preparing a difficulty reset, and working toward a method for selecting a new PoW algorithm.

To BIP-110 critics, the episode demonstrated that nodes can enforce whatever rules their operators choose, but doing so does not compel users, miners, exchanges, businesses, or the broader market to follow them.