Key Takeaways:
Foundry Digital, the largest Bitcoin mining pool, will let its clients vote on whether to signal for BIP-110 — a soft fork that has drawn less than 1% miner support seven months into the process.
Foundry Digital, the world's largest Bitcoin mining pool operator, will allow its clients to vote on how the pool signals for BIP-110, a soft fork proposal that would restrict non-financial data on the blockchain for roughly one year.
"As miners, it's important for you to have a voice and participate in the governance of the network," Foundry said in its announcement Friday.
Each vote carries weight based on an account's average 10-day hashrate between July 6 and July 15. Foundry's starting position is "No" — it will signal against the proposal with all its blocks until "Yes" votes cross 51% of voting hashrate. Accounts that do not respond count as "No." The signaling period runs through early August at block 961,632.
Foundry controls roughly a third of total network hashrate, making its stance consequential. With miner support for BIP-110 stuck below 1% since signaling began in December 2025, the pool's decision could determine whether the proposal reaches the 55% threshold needed for activation — or whether it fizzles into a minority chain split.
What BIP-110 would change
Authored by developer Dathon Ohm, BIP-110 — also called the Reduced Data Temporary Soft Fork — would cap the amount of arbitrary, non-monetary data that Bitcoin transactions can carry. It limits most new outputs to 34 bytes, restores an 83-byte limit on OP_RETURN outputs, and rejects data pushes above 256 bytes. Existing UTXOs created before activation would remain exempt.
Supporters argue the soft fork would let Bitcoin function as pure peer-to-peer money by curbing inscriptions from Ordinals, BRC-20 tokens, and the Runes protocol. Opponents, including Strategy founder Michael Saylor and Blockstream co-founder Adam Back, say it converts a policy dispute into a consensus change that could invalidate fee-paying transactions and set a dangerous precedent for network neutrality.
Why miner support is near zero
BIP-110 relies on a user-activated soft fork mechanism, requiring 55% miner support over a 2,016-block period — well below the traditional 95% threshold. Yet no major pool has signaled support. Nearly all blocks carrying the BIP-110 flag come from Ocean, the pool co-founded by Luke Dashjr, and a handful of small independent operators. F2Pool has openly opposed the proposal.
The mandatory signaling window near block 961,632, projected for early August, will force the question before the activation timeline closes. If BIP-110 fails to reach the threshold, nodes running the modified software could reject blocks that do not signal support, potentially creating a minority chain split. In practice, with adoption concentrated among Bitcoin Knots users in the low single digits, such a split would carry negligible economic activity.
The alternative: DOG Mode
While BIP-110 seeks to restrict data through a consensus change, a competing proposal from Ordinals advocate Leonidas takes the opposite approach. DOG Mode, an open-source Bitcoin client announced last week, would relax Bitcoin Core's relay policies by raising the maximum standard transaction from 400,000 weight units to 3.9 million — near the full block size — and cutting the dust limit to one satoshi. Leonidas claims the change would free about $25 million in "padding" used by Ordinals and Runes.
Unlike BIP-110, DOG Mode alters only what individual nodes forward, not consensus rules, and requires no miner vote. It currently exists as an announced initiative without a code repository or release version.
For investors, the key question is whether any major pool breaks ranks before the August deadline. A Foundry "Yes" vote would fundamentally change the calculus. Without it, BIP-110 is almost certain to fail on the primary chain, leaving the debate over what data belongs on Bitcoin unresolved — and setting the stage for the next governance fight.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
