Roughnecks

110th Mining Division

Last Notes

2026-07-19 15:01:39 CEST

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Check the reply to the post

2026-07-19 15:00:46 CEST

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Roughneck Chronicles 2: The Rational Miner
Roughnecks
“There’s a difference between strong and oil rig strong.” -Roughneck Proverb
Miners do not benefit from arbitrary data on Bitcoin any more than a heroin addict benefits from heroin. The high-time preference view, that miners are obligated to blindly chase fees at all costs, is not game theory in action but a mundane fiat-minded race to the bottom that ails much of the legacy financial system. The rational miner, like any rational actor, weighs the long-term costs and benefits of their actions beyond the fleeting “high” of the next block.
We use the term “arbitrary data” here rather than “spam,” as the latter carries a negative connotation and can be difficult to define in a way that satisfies everyone. “Arbitrary data” is a more neutral term that gets to the heart of the matter without bogging us down in endless philosophical debates such as whether a legitimate Nigerian barrister truly needs to email an elderly widow in Poughkeepsie about a time-sensitive financial matter.
As miners, we are often told that we should remain neutral toward the transactions that enter our blocks and judge them solely by their fee rate. This, we are assured, preserves Bitcoin’s censorship resistance and protocol neutrality. But censorship resistance and neutrality do not require us to play dumb. We have eyes and ears. We can observe what is happening in the Bitcoin ecosystem. We can listen to feedback from our customers and the validators who run nodes. It is not censorship to heed the Bitcoiners who demand functional blocks and the nodes that validate and store them. If they make it clear that arbitrary data is a nuisance, we do not have to pretend otherwise.
Doing what our customers and validators want is not “going against the free market.” It is the free market at work. There is a reason companies pay handsomely for market research and customer feedback. The insights are worth far more, by orders of magnitude, than their cost. Some will claim we act against our own interests by rejecting valid, fee-paying transactions. Nothing could be further from the truth. By listening to what Bitcoiners want and expect from their vendors, we help both them and ourselves.
Miners benefit from rejecting arbitrary data in several concrete ways. Arbitrary data competes directly with payments for scarce block space. When it dominates transactions (roughly 70% at the time of writing), it discourages Bitcoin’s use as a payment network. Note that payments competing with other payments differs fundamentally from payments competing with unrelated uses. We believe a peer-to-peer cash network is far more valuable than a data storage network; for hodlers, users, miners, and humanity at large. Squeezing a few extra sats by filling blocks with data is like dropping dimes to chase a nickel. It appears productive but burdens node runners who must store that data in perpetuity and allocate more RAM and resources to validate our blocks.
The network’s overall value and resiliency suffer far more than the sats gained. Miners benefit more by attracting new users to Bitcoin than by enabling high-time preference actors to offload their data storage costs onto the chain for a one-time fee. If network resiliency weakens, so does the censorship resistance and neutrality that Bitcoiners value. None of this is a novel idea within Bitcoin stewardship. Bitcoin Core developers, and even Satoshi himself, have held similar views. What is novel is the recent reframing of efforts to limit arbitrary data as “censorship.” Notably, the loudest voices making this claim often stand to gain financially from the next token pump-and-dump.
Tourists who use Bitcoin to enrich themselves through arbitrary data schemes harm the network long-term. Miners are not immune from this harm. That's not onboarding new users; that's looking the other way while victims lose money and absolving ourselves with a shrug while muttering “free market.” This is not only immoral, it is bad for our bottom line, bad for neutrality, bad for censorship resistance, and bad for humanity.
It might feel good to pee in the pool, but that doesn't make it okay.

2026-07-19 14:52:19 CEST

Roughneck Chronicles 2: The Rational Miner
https://x.com/roughnecks110/status/2078820263375036710
https://image.nostr.build/56516646f92b0112990d1f60ae9abf6256350a10a0ce73016c0880e9da49a106.jpg

2026-07-18 00:56:28 CEST

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“Come on you apes, you want to live forever?” -Jean Rasczak
The great Jason Hughes, for whom we must thank for our existence, says he sees little to no support for BIP110. If we took him at his word, we would have no reason to mine blocks signaling for BIP110. From our perspective, there is an overwhelming market demand for BIP110. First let us clarify what we mean by a market demand. Market demand is not determined by large industry suppliers, i.e. the large mining pools. Large industry suppliers are often slower to react to the demands of the market than smaller upstart suppliers like us. To try to gauge what the market wants by looking to what the larger suppliers are providing leaves one with a massive blind spot. Market demand can only be determined by the users. Then the question becomes, who are the users?
The users of Bitcoin, from a miner’s perspective, are the ones who are demanding blocks and it is them alone who will determine whether BIP110 is implemented. Countless plebs running nodes and small to medium sized businesses have come forward and said they are running BIP110 and they are using those nodes to transact on the Bitcoin network. There is a market demand for BIP110 blocks, plain and simple. The question is, who will supply those blocks? We are happy to be one of those suppliers. Whether our competitors in the mining space join us to meet that market demand is a question they must answer on their own. Unfortunately for us, we don’t think we will be the only ones responding to this market demand. We think there are other miners who will get in on the action and satisfy what the market wants.
What if we’re wrong and there is no market demand for BIP110 blocks? If the market tells us they’re not interested in the blocks we are mining, we will stop mining them. It is the users we are looking to to determine what the best course of action is. Large treasury companies who don’t self-custody their coins are not a good gauge of what users want. Large established industry players are not a good gauge of the current demands of users. To summarize, we mine BIP110 blocks because we think there is a demand for BIP110 blocks. After mandatory signaling, we think that demand remains even if other suppliers don’t see it yet. The market will determine whether we continue mining BIP110 blocks; not influencers, not other suppliers, not large businesses who are out of touch with Bitcoiners and their needs.
Is BIP110 a 100% certainty? No. We think it’s more likely than not to happen. But if it was a certainty, we wouldn’t be having so much fun!

2026-07-17 20:02:11 CEST

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https://image.nostr.build/21d918140f688d63a9068e0f2804482539a4dc193e75eed6ba8b95728f04302a.gif

2026-07-17 19:40:09 CEST

Is Foundry preparing to flip the bit? 👀 Someone must have read our article and doesn't want to be left out of the gold rush from mining BIP110 blocks
https://image.nostr.build/23471b99ede0f80797ae266afc3488eca9dd942cba7d31438a65f91cade153f2.jpg

2026-07-17 16:31:31 CEST

GM Roughnecks! Our 1st article was a hit. Thank you to everyone who read & shared. Our next article will talk about arbitrary data and why it's just as harmful to miners as it is to nodes, hodlers, and merchants. Rational self-interested miners will reject arbitrary data https://x.com/roughnecks110/status/2077762515199779223
https://image.nostr.build/ff16e47c41708c74aa87da883cce2955df6e7905d0a851282d72dcd833f463c3.jpg

2026-07-17 16:26:46 CEST

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Yes

2026-07-16 23:05:58 CEST

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We got you!
“Come on you apes, you want to live forever?” -Jean Rasczak
The great Jason Hughes, for whom we must thank for our existence, says he sees little to no support for BIP110. If we took him at his word, we would have no reason to mine blocks signaling for BIP110. From our perspective, there is an overwhelming market demand for BIP110. First let us clarify what we mean by a market demand. Market demand is not determined by large industry suppliers, i.e. the large mining pools. Large industry suppliers are often slower to react to the demands of the market than smaller upstart suppliers like us. To try to gauge what the market wants by looking to what the larger suppliers are providing leaves one with a massive blind spot. Market demand can only be determined by the users. Then the question becomes, who are the users?
The users of Bitcoin, from a miner’s perspective, are the ones who are demanding blocks and it is them alone who will determine whether BIP110 is implemented. Countless plebs running nodes and small to medium sized businesses have come forward and said they are running BIP110 and they are using those nodes to transact on the Bitcoin network. There is a market demand for BIP110 blocks, plain and simple. The question is, who will supply those blocks? We are happy to be one of those suppliers. Whether our competitors in the mining space join us to meet that market demand is a question they must answer on their own. Unfortunately for us, we don’t think we will be the only ones responding to this market demand. We think there are other miners who will get in on the action and satisfy what the market wants.
What if we’re wrong and there is no market demand for BIP110 blocks? If the market tells us they’re not interested in the blocks we are mining, we will stop mining them. It is the users we are looking to to determine what the best course of action is. Large treasury companies who don’t self-custody their coins are not a good gauge of what users want. Large established industry players are not a good gauge of the current demands of users. To summarize, we mine BIP110 blocks because we think there is a demand for BIP110 blocks. After mandatory signaling, we think that demand remains even if other suppliers don’t see it yet. The market will determine whether we continue mining BIP110 blocks; not influencers, not other suppliers, not large businesses who are out of touch with Bitcoiners and their needs.
Is BIP110 a 100% certainty? No. We think it’s more likely than not to happen. But if it was a certainty, we wouldn’t be having so much fun!

2026-07-16 21:02:42 CEST

Roughneck Chronicles 1 https://x.com/roughnecks110/status/2077762515199779223
https://image.nostr.build/802c413b4d972e7a872a8ac5505469bf906f8960719164f12e16b381009cc74a.jpg

2026-07-13 19:24:20 CEST

GM Roughnecks! The concern trolls are telling us to ignore 20% of the network and mine non-BIP110 blocks. We cannot mine blocks that leave us vulnerable to a reorg if a large pool flips the bit and invalidates all our block rewards
https://image.nostr.build/6790d89188b663838332a79d2b96ccc458db5520883a2141d0e29be7cd13b395.jpg

2026-07-11 15:12:51 CEST

GM Roughnecks! Difficulty drops today, let's listen to some Johnny Cash while trying to find a block before and after change 🔉🪕🎵🎶
https://video.nostr.build/1d36fd6187ba2c675d8f25a4d4a311bb1ae3ae91a7320dbe7597c025de11f8f6.mov

2026-07-06 15:45:39 CEST

GM Roughnecks!
https://image.nostr.build/5f7ccdad45a76ca6a104f2a9d20ca3bd7448ec426c029a48262172840d65d0c3.jpg

2026-07-06 01:29:23 CEST

We have a nostr and an X account. We have no other accounts on any other platform. We certainly don't have an account on a scam gambling platform. We are not hedged in any way. Gambling is a sin. BIP110 will activate. Our opponents have resorted to desperate lies ⚔️💀⚔️
https://image.nostr.build/a6ac44fbb5c49853b471b2260243e8ec62b5d0051be20a264aa1825a19fff3c0.jpg

2026-07-05 15:49:57 CEST

What it feels like when you see a new miner signal for BIP110
https://image.nostr.build/e9e1fcfa1ad4ece698e426545493df501c2abc79338780aa6d30fbea86dd71d1.jpg

2026-07-05 08:39:28 CEST

We salute our brothers and sisters at @npub10vk…y3ep for mining their first BIP110 block
https://image.nostr.build/02bac184d3a7415b74bc4fadc9eeef7f03ad24e0491f7823e7c3cad89ac2ee28.jpg

2026-07-04 10:27:59 CEST

As we celebrate America's 250th birthday with another BIP110 block we are humbled by the amazing success of our ragtag mining operation. We started out a couple months ago with about 1 Eh/s. We have since grown to about 15 Eh/s which is roughly 1% of the network. We are blessed with this opportunity. God Bless America!
https://image.nostr.build/a69521fb621f18fefcace30f6880ed4ac39585badb96d97ad7a6d6c0c743dc5a.jpg