Luke Dashjr Leaves Ocean Over Bitcoin Mining Rift
Ocean, operated by Mummolin Inc., launched in 2023 with $6.2 million from a seed round led by Jack Dorsey. The transparent, non-custodial Bitcoin mining pool is designed to pay block rewards directly to miners and reduce operators’ control over block construction. Luke Dashjr, a longtime Bitcoin Core developer and Ocean co-founder, helped shape that decentralization strategy, making his departure significant for the pool’s technical direction.
Ocean and Dashjr said on Aug. 29, 2026, that they had mutually agreed to separate after developing different views on Bitcoin mining’s future following recent protocol developments. Dashjr resigned as chairman, chief technology officer and director, while Mummolin repurchased all his equity for an undisclosed amount. He plans to pursue a new venture, CONVOY, focused on decentralized mining, while Ocean said its existing non-custodial pool would continue serving miners.
All Coverage
1 original reportsThe Backstory
The history behind this eventBitcoin BIP Maintainers Remove Luke Dashjr as Editor
Bitcoin Improvement Proposals, or BIPs, are the formal documents used to describe proposed changes to the network, while editors handle administrative tasks including reviewing submissions, assigning numbers and maintaining the GitHub repository. Luke Dashjr had served in the role for years. The dispute centers on BIP-110, a one-year soft fork designed to curb Ordinals and other non-financial data, pitting anti-spam advocates against critics who said the plan threatened transaction neutrality and exposed governance fault lines.
On Aug. 9, 2026, the bitcoin/bips repository recorded a one-line commit removing Dashjr from its list of six editors, leaving five and ending his repository management privileges. The action followed BIP-110’s split at block 961,632, when miner signaling was about 2.5%, far below the proposal’s 55% threshold. The minority branch mined only two blocks before stalling. Dashjr protested the decision and accused Bitcoin Core developers of abusing their authority, while other editors cited concerns over impartial stewardship of the BIP process.
Subscribe to Mark Radar Weekly
Every Friday, the week's strongest signals in your inbox. Unsubscribe anytime.
If you search news on Google, you can set Mark Radar as a preferred source—our coverage will show up more often in your results. Set as preferred source on Google →