Bitcoin mining company Simple Mining produced block 961634 on Sunday, explicitly rejecting support for the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-110. This move came after supporters of the proposal had split from the main chain starting from block 961632. Simple Mining stated that hash power represents real voting power and that the proposal is not worth following.

The company achieved block-building autonomy through Ocean Pool's DATUM protocol, allowing it to choose not to signal support for BIP-110 in its block. This decision holds special significance because Ocean Pool, which Simple Mining uses, had switched miners to default signaling support for BIP-110 in July. Before the fork, almost all of the minimal hash power supporting the proposal came from Ocean Pool.

BIP-110 aims to prohibit storing images, text, and other non-financial data in Bitcoin transactions for a period of one year. The DATUM protocol enables individual miners to build blocks using their own Bitcoin software while still contributing hash power to Ocean Pool and participating in reward distribution. This returns the decision-making power over transaction packaging and signal identification back to individual miners.

Previously, miners supporting BIP-110 began rejecting blocks that did not carry the signal starting from block 961632. At that time, the proposal's support rate peaked at around 2.6%, far below the 55% required for passage. On Saturday, a miner using Ocean Pool produced the first accepted block on the BIP-110 branch. Subsequently, Simple Mining used the same pool to make an opposite choice, producing a new block on the main chain.

The minority branch stalled after producing blocks 961632 and 961633, while the main chain maintained its normal block production rate of approximately one block every ten minutes. As of Monday, the main chain has progressed to block 961725, with the BIP-110 branch trailing by more than 200 blocks.