By nostr:nprofile1qqsy9maq5m2yqnhkjfr20l6zh3qxkuycmre9qzzqrwa0clw9jp2el3gpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgqghwaehxw309aex2mrp0yhxxatjwfjkuapwveuk...
By nostr:nprofile1qqsy9maq5m2yqnhkjfr20l6zh3qxkuycmre9qzzqrwa0clw9jp2el3gpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgqghwaehxw309aex2mrp0yhxxatjwfjkuapwveukj8zkgjm Cuny:
What BIP-110 reveals about who actually decides
Most of the BIP-110 commentary is scored on a single axis, revenue.
The typical bear case is that a soft fork which rejects miners’ blocks only bites if the rejecting nodes are the ones the miner needs in order to cash out. If the enforcing nodes are regular plebs, a non-signalling pool’s blocks still clear at the exchanges and custodians running Core. Rejection by a node minority costs them nothing.
But looking at the revenue axis alone is not enough.
What’s been said
nostr:nprofile1qqs8fl79rnpsz5x00xmvkvtd8g2u7ve2k2dr3lkfadyy4v24r4k3s4spz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7qgwwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkctc9e4umg and others exposed how the prisoner’s dilemma applies to BIP-110.
Through the mandatory signalling window that opens around August 8, a block that fails to set bit 4 is rejected by enforcing nodes regardless of what it contains. So the moment decision becomes unavoidable and public, no pool wants to be the last one left holding orphaned blocks, and the rush to signal becomes self-fulfilling.
The payoff is asymmetric: Signalling is a single free bit; not-signalling carries a tail that, if it materialises, is catastrophic. And the supposed cost of signalling (spam fees) is a rounding error. Nobody is protecting a meaningful revenue stream by refusing to enforce.
All true. But let’s go deeper.
The two-bit surface
A large pool is a corporate entity. It answers to hashers, investors, and various stakeholders. And its real decision surface is pretty narrow. Strip away the mystique of ninety-percent-of-hashrate and a pool’s consensus surface is discrete, binary, and public:
1) follow the rules or not,
2) filter or not
Signalling is just publicly announcing what’s coming next on 1.
That is the entire sovereign surface at the protocol layer; the rest is operations. And this is the whole fight: BIP-110 takes some of the filtering to make it a consensus obligation, temporarily. It shrinks the surface further.
The consequence is that a pool cannot make a quiet decision about BIP-110. Whatever it does is a position it has to author, document, and defend.
And there is a room that asks. Hashers, whose coinbase and fees are precisely what a rejected block destroys; a board and counsel who carry a duty to disclose material risk; The entity that supposedly cares only about payouts is the one with the most standing to ask why you mined into a set that rejects them.
Mining into rejection by a verification minority (~14% of reachable nodes, growing) is not inertia. It is a governance posture. Nodes exist to accept or reject blocks; that is consensus enforcement.
There is no third door
Once a verification minority of that size exists, choosing to be rejected by it is not a neutral act.
Press a holdout pool and there are only two answers, both bad.
Are you in favor of a URSF — a client that actively rejects BIP-110 blocks and defends the unrestricted chain?
Say yes, and you have endorsed deliberately splitting the network.
Say no, and you have conceded there is no organized alternative to what that minority is enforcing, which means you are not principled resistance.
There is no free third door.
A pool can be revenue-safe, its coins clear, and simultaneously accountability-exposed, because it has had months, a clearly-flagged window, and a visible enforcing minority, and it will be asked: What were you doing all this time? Where is your alternative? By what justification do you mine into a growing rejection set as though it isn’t there?
How a risk-averse entity actually scores this
A large pool is not risk-neutral. It is risk-averse, structurally. A risk-averse entity doesn’t choose the action with the best expected value. It chooses the action whose worst case it can survive and, just as important, explain.
Score signalling that way:
Best case, the fork activates and you were on the right side of it.
Worst case, it fails, you flipped a free bit, you gave up a rounding-error of fees, and no one ever asks you about it again. The downside is bounded.
Now score holding out:
Best case, BIP-110 fizzles and you look prudent.
Worst case is a fat tail: enforcement gains economic weight, your blocks get rejected by a cohort you publicly ignored, and you are now explaining to hashers and counsel why you mined into a known, flagged, growing rejection set without a plan or an alternative. Even the non-catastrophic branch carries a standing disclosure obligation: You have to communicate to stakeholders the risk exists, which is itself an admission you chose it.
A risk-averse decision-maker doesn’t need to believe the fat tail is likely. That is the whole point: you hedge cheap insurance against tails you think improbable, precisely because the premium is trivial and the alternative is unrecoverable. Signalling is that insurance. The bit costs nothing; it deletes the disclosure obligation by deleting the risk it would disclose. You don’t report what you’ve eliminated.
And notice this holds in every branch, not just the bad one. The meeting where you explain your reasoning likely happens regardless of outcome. That's what being accountable means. So the real test isn't which result you'd prefer; it's which decision you can defend.
"We signalled, it didn't activate, it cost a free bit" is the complete answer. "We declined to signal and got away with it" is not an answer, it's a result. You still have to justify why you chose the rejected cohort when nothing forced you to, and "it worked out" reads as luck, not process.
Signalling is defensible in every branch; holding out is defensible in none of them without a thesis you've committed to in advance.
A probe, not the battle
The demand for spam-mitigated Bitcoin is structural, and it is growing; 14% of nodes mobilized is not a fringe you get to ignore, and it is larger every cycle.
Each round, “we await consensus” gets harder to say with a straight face, and the window in which a non-signalling memo is defensible narrows.
The trait that makes the giants look powerful (their size) is precisely what removes their cheap options. A sovereign running one node can hold a principled line for free: no customer, no counsel, no board, no disclosure surface, no one to answer to. A large pool can hold nothing for free. Every posture it takes is documented and carries liability. Scale doesn’t buy these pools freedom of action here. It strips it away.
So the direction is set. The only open question is which large actor moves first, and when.
BIP-110 is revealing where consensus power actually lives.
— Renaud
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