Bitcoin Knots Plans New Proof-of-Work Algorithm After BIP-110 Enforcement Fails

The new mining algorithm is intended to push back against miners that refused to support BIP-110's signaling requirements. Bitcoin Knots said on August 11 that it plans to choose a new proof-of-work algorithm for the stalled BIP-110 chain after the minority fork produced only two blocks. The move sets up another confrontation over Bitcoin’s block policy, while the main network continues producing blocks normally. Knots Pushes New Algorithm as the Fork Stalls Knots told users not to downgrade or switch to software that weakens Bitcoin’s consensus rules, warning that doing so could expose them to false confirmations from invalid blocks. Anyone who had already switched was told to upgrade to the latest Knots client, which the project said would attempt to repair the chain state automatically, and miners restarting nodes were told to add the line maxtipage=2592000 to their configuration file. It also said a new proof-of-work algorithm would be selected at 14:00 UTC on August 11 through a deterministic random process among proposed candidates. A hash was posted alongside the algorithm announcement as what Knots called a proof of fairness for the random selection process. The announcemen...