Luke Dashjr abandons Ocean pool to launch Convoy
- Luke Dashjr quit Ocean Mining to launch Convoy, a hard-forked alternative chain.
- Convoy swapped SHA-256 for Blake2b hashing, bricking ASIC miners on the new network.
- Swedish regulators forced peer-to-peer exchange Peach Bitcoin to end identity-free trade escrow.
Luke Dashjr is officially out at Ocean. The legendary Bitcoin developer sold his equity back to the mining pool after a fierce protocol rift over transaction filtering.
Dashjr resigned as CTO following a failed push to rally miners around BIP 110. Ocean chairman Bob Burnett took over pool oversight alongside lead investor Jack Dorsey, ending months of internal governance friction. Rather than accepting defeat within Bitcoin's core software stack, Dashjr immediately pivoted to launch a spin-off venture called Convoy alongside developer Mechanic.
Convoy replaces Bitcoin's standard SHA-256 algorithm with Blake2b hashing. The change intentionally renders existing ASIC mining rigs useless on the new network, forcing participants to mine with general hardware. Following the hard fork, difficulty resets caused Convoy to produce blocks at a rapid rate of one per minute while the chain establishes its baseline hash rate.
Economic consensus failed to follow the hard fork. Convoy listed briefly across a few niche exchanges in a wide price corridor between $83 and $383 before trading thinned out. On September 6, 2026, on Stacker News Live, hosts Keon and Carvin noted that developers who split from Bitcoin rarely establish durable monetary alternatives, often returning to core development years later.
The developer rift coincides with mounting state pressure on Bitcoin's non-custodial trading rails. Swedish financial regulators recently forced peer-to-peer exchange Peach Bitcoin to abandon its identity-free escrow service. Regulators reversed a 2022 stance that exempted multi-signature trade dispute arbitration from full customer surveillance rules.
Keon argued on Stacker News Live that stripping non-custodial platforms of dispute mediation leaves users exposed to counterparty fraud unless they submit to identity checks. P2P platforms across Europe face an increasingly hostile legal framework where corporate entities cannot maintain dispute resolution without surrendering privacy features.
The dual pressures are reshaping the ecosystem. As developers fork away over transaction policy and regulators clamp down on corporate P2P rails, the line between compromise and absolute protocol purity continues to harden.
Source Intelligence
- Deep dive into what was said in the episodes
SNL #240: JOINT STATEMENT OF OCEAN AND LUKE DASHJR • Sep 6
- Luke Dashjr has parted ways with Ocean Mining, resigning as CTO and selling his equity back to the company. Luke Dashjr will launch a new mining venture named Convoy to continue his pursuit of decentralized mining.
- Luke Dashjr's spin-off chain uses the Blake2b hashing algorithm and is temporarily mining blocks every minute due to unadjusted difficulty. Carr predicts the chain will eventually attempt to deploy Layer-2 scaling solutions.
Also discussed on this episode: (8)
Privacy (1)
- Blindport offers a NAT hole-punching tunnel similar to Cloudflare but does not terminate TLS at its servers. Keyon explains this design prevents the provider from reading plain-text HTTPS requests, offering self-hosters a more private alternative.
Coding (2)
- Developer EK hosted a terminal-based Capture the Flag security contest run directly on a local laptop. The challenge awarded 20,000 satoshis to several winners and an additional 10,000 satoshis to another user for uncovering system flags.
- Open Agents launched Coder Terminal, a developer harness powered by Gemini 3.8 Flash. The harness bypasses the frequent permission prompts typical of tools like Claude, allowing autonomous local file system changes by default.
Regulation (1)
- Swedish regulators forced peer-to-peer Bitcoin platform Peach to suspend its KYC-free escrow service. Keyon argues that regulators have zero incentive to protect users from scams, preferring massive databases of private financial data to ease surveillance.
Models (1)
- An AI research paper shows that training an LLM harness yields significant performance gains across different models. Keyon defines a harness as the toolset chassis that translates local system capabilities and command-line utilities to the AI engine.
Adoption (1)
- Stacker News integrated Lightspark's Spark Wallet to lower the onboarding barrier for non-technical users. Keyon defends the integration against custodial critics, noting that training wheels are essential to scale Bitcoin adoption beyond the developer community.
Philosophy (1)
- Carr attributes the strong community backlash against Spark Wallet to personal animosity toward Lightspark CEO David Marcus. Marcus's previous leadership roles at Facebook's Libra project and PayPal fuel structural suspicion within the maximalist community.
Education (1)
- Discussing alternative learning methods, Keyon highlights hands-on initiatives like Bitcoin Shala, which teaches core network concepts entirely through the command line. This practical approach reflects a broader preference among developers for active immersion.