Luke Dashjr exits Ocean pool to launch Convoy hard fork
- Ocean repurchased Luke Dashjr's equity following a dispute over filtered Bitcoin transactions.
- Dashjr launched Convoy, an alternative chain swapping SHA-256 for Blake2b to disable ASIC miners.
- Markets rejected the split chain, trading Convoy briefly on niche exchanges between $83 and $383.
Luke Dashjr has officially severed ties with Ocean mining pool to pursue his own chain.
Ocean repurchased the co-founder's equity following months of internal friction over transaction filtering and protocol upgrades. Ocean chairman Bob Burnett stepped up to lead pool operations, while primary backer Jack Dorsey maintained his alignment with the main platform. The split capped an escalating standoff over BIP 110, Dashjr's proposal to enforce transaction filtering rules on miners.
On Ungovernable Misfits, host Q tracked the technical genesis of the split when Dashjr released software replacing Bitcoin's SHA-256 algorithm with Blake2b. The change intended to brick specialized ASIC hardware, but major exchanges, pools, and Lightning implementations flatly refused to run the code.
Dashjr did not back down after the initial rejection.
Partnering with developer Mechanic, Dashjr launched Convoy as an independent alternative chain. On Stacker News Live, hosts Keon and Carvin noted that Convoy's difficulty resets allowed the network to produce roughly one block per minute immediately following the hard fork.
Economic support for the breakaway network collapsed almost immediately. Convoy listed briefly on niche exchanges between $83 and $383 before liquidity evaporated, signaling near-zero market interest in Dashjr's altered consensus rules.
History offers a stark precedent for protocol dissidents. On Stacker News Live, Keon observed that developers who break away to form alternative chains rarely build lasting monetary competitors, though many eventually return to the primary network. Ocean has stabilized its core mining infrastructure while Dashjr runs his isolated ledger.