TL;DR
Foundry USA, the world’s largest Bitcoin mining pool by hashrate, asked its mining clients to cast their vote on how the pool should signal regarding Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 (BIP-110).
The proposal is a soft fork currently under debate within the community. Its premise is to reduce the amount of data that can be stored in a Bitcoin transaction, with the explicit goal of limiting possible non-monetary uses of the network, such as Ordinals inscriptions.
Alongside the call to vote, Foundry published educational resources on BIP-110 to guide its clients. The voting window will close at Bitcoin block 961,632, expected in early August. Pool clients can cast their vote through a link received via email.
BIP-110 is currently one of the most controversial proposals in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Adam Back, chief executive officer of Blockstream and a central figure in Bitcoin’s development, came out strongly against it, warning that the proposal could be used to freeze user funds. Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy, also criticized BIP-110. Saylor noted that its implementation could invalidate ordinary transactions on the network.
The opposing voices come from figures with historical and technical weight in the ecosystem, which underscores the depth of the impact and the debate surrounding the limits of the protocol and what types of uses the Bitcoin network should or should not allow.
According to data from provider Hashrate Index, Foundry accounts for approximately 23.8% of the total hashrate of the Bitcoin network, making its stance on BIP-110 a highly significant factor in the eventual outcome of the vote.
