Luke Dashjr said on X that he is temporarily stepping down as OCEAN's chairman and chief technology officer, shifting his focus to Bitcoin and open-source projects supporting it. He is a core supporter of BIP-110. However, OCEAN's default stratum endpoint reverted to non-BIP-110 on August 9, meaning the hashrate of miners is no longer directed to BIP-110 by default.

Bitcoin reached block height 961,632 in the early hours of Aug. 9 Beijing time, triggering BIP-110’s mandatory signaling phase and a split between nodes enforcing the proposal and the main chain. The result was brief. The BIP-110 branch produced only two blocks before stalling, while Bitcoin’s main network continued operating normally. In the previous difficulty period, the proposal had received support signals from just 51 blocks, or 2.53%, far below its self-defined 55% threshold for voluntary early lock-in. BIP-110, submitted by pseudonymous developer Dathon Ohm with early draft input from Luke Dashjr, aimed to impose temporary consensus-level limits that would raise the cost of writing large amounts of continuous data to Bitcoin, including Ordinals-style inscriptions. Supporters argued that full nodes bear the burden of downloading, validating, and in some cases storing this data, while critics said changing consensus rules to target an unpopular but fee-paying use of Bitcoin would create a dangerous precedent. The fork’s failure has not ended the dispute. Debate continues over on-chain data, protocol neutrality, user-activated soft forks, miner support, and Bitcoin’s development process. For ordinary holders, the short-term concern is replay risk: because the minority chain lacks built-in replay protection, developers and Ledger have warned that moving or selling forked coins could also move corresponding BTC on the main chain if users are not careful.

Bitcoin’s BIP editors removed Luke Dashjr from the role on Monday, two days after the BIP-110 soft fork he backed split thousands of nodes onto a chain that has not produced a block since Aug. 8. The move was carried out by revoking his GitHub permissions and deleting his name and email from BIP 3, even though the BIPs repository has no written process for appointing or dismissing editors. Bryan Bishop confirmed the change on the Bitcoin Development Mailing List, while Jon Atack merged pull request #2248 to strike Dashjr from the list of editors. Erhardt, also known as Murch, had opened the motion a day earlier, citing four reasons: conflict of interest, minimal contribution, support for a contentious fork, and a collapse in coordination with the rest of the editors. Dashjr rejected the accusations, calling them false and saying he had followed the BIP process consistently for years. The discussion drew backing from BIP editor Olaoluwa Osuntokun, Bitcoin Core contributors Matt Corallo, Antoine Poinsot, and Anthony Towns, libsecp256k1 maintainer Jonas Nick, and Casa co-founder Jameson Lopp. Some participants supported the outcome while criticizing the speed and the lack of formal governance rules. Meanwhile, the BIP-110 enforcing chain remained stuck at height 961,633, signaling dropped to zero in the current difficulty period, and Bitcoin’s market price showed little reaction.

PANews reported that Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-110 entered its mandatory signaling phase on August 9 but quickly ran into a wall. The minority chain tied to the proposal produced only two blocks in roughly eight hours, both mined by Roughnecks, after signaling support fell far short of the activation threshold. In the last difficulty period before activation, only 51 blocks signaled support, or about 2.53% of the 2,016-block window. Roughnecks and later PyBLOCK then paused support, while developer Luke Dashjr drew public criticism over the dispute.

Bitcoin’s proposed soft fork BIP-110 failed to win broad support, but the debate around it exposed a deeper split over what Bitcoin should allow on-chain and who gets to decide. The proposal was backed by OCEAN founder Luke Dashjr, whose mining pool previously raised a $6.2 million seed round led by Block CEO and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Supporters argued that non-financial data such as Ordinals, BRC-20 and inscriptions should be filtered at the consensus layer to protect Bitcoin’s core monetary role and reduce chain bloat. Critics, including Strategy founder Michael Saylor and Blockstream CEO Adam Back, said paid transactions should be treated neutrally and warned that filtering them would damage Bitcoin’s permissionless neutrality. The fight quickly spilled onto X, where both camps argued over censorship, governance and miner rights. The article also ties the proposal to OCEAN’s broader effort to decentralize mining through non-custodial payouts and the DATUM protocol, while noting that the pool’s hash share has fallen to about 1%. In practice, BIP-110 also ran into a major hashpower problem: the main chain held roughly 97.4% to 97.5% of support, while the BIP-110 side had only about 2.5% to 2.6%, leaving the forked chain facing severe delays and a near-paralyzed difficulty adjustment cycle.

Crypto markets on Aug. 10 were driven by a mix of trading data, policy signals, corporate developments and geopolitical headlines. On centralized exchanges, BMT and TUT posted the largest gains among the top 10 tokens by trading volume, while OKX’s 24-hour leaderboard was led by BOME and PEOPLE. On-chain, GMGN’s most watched meme tokens were TODA, REMUS, LOUIE, RISK and PUMPGUY. Away from the tape, Unitree Robotics officially opened subscriptions for its STAR Market IPO, with the market estimating an allotment rate of just 0.02% to 0.03%. In U.S. crypto legislation, Polymarket data showed the probability of the CLARITY Act becoming law by Dec. 31 had dropped to 21%, while Senate procedure points to a first cloture vote on Sept. 15. Industry updates included Bithumb restricting deposits and withdrawals tied to three entities sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, fresh data showing more than 100 crypto projects have shut down or filed for bankruptcy in 2026 so far, and DeFiLlama figures showing Pump.fun’s 30-day protocol revenue moved ahead of Hyperliquid. Separate updates covered Strategy’s lack of Bitcoin purchases since June, a $10.5 million seed round for Dow Protocol, and proposed South Korean tax and VASP rule changes.

According to ChainCatcher, F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun said that OCEAN pool co-founder and CTO Luke Dashjr is bankrupt both financially and in terms of personal credibility. Wang added, sarcastically, that trying to change the PoW algorithm would not end well either.

Wang Chun, co-founder of F2Pool, said OCEAN Pool co-founder and CTO Luke Dashjr is both financially and reputationally bankrupt. His remarks follow the Bitcoin BIP-110 fork struggling just eight hours after launch, securing too little hash power to produce more than two blocks.