Bitcoin‘s successful fourth block reward halving has sparked significant discourse about the situation of miners in the largest cryptocurrency network. While major players continue to invest in new mining devices, smaller participants face serious challenges due to a significant 50% drop in block rewards. Meanwhile, in the mining sector, Casey, the founder of Bitcoin Ordinals, has announced his latest solution addressing concerns about the decentralization of Bitcoin mining.
Emphasizing the Centralization Issues in Bitcoin Mining
Casey emphasized Bitcoin’s censorship-resistant core value proposition, which relies on the decentralized structure of miners racing to verify blocks on the Bitcoin Blockchain. However, he warned about the current scenario where a few leading pools act as proxies for AntPool, thus compromising their supposed independence.
Bitcoin mining activities being concentrated among a few major players is a proven fact, reflecting the dominance observed among mining chip providers, primarily Bitmain. However, recent developments like Jack Dorsey’s company Block announcing the completion of its next-generation Bitcoin mining chips have boosted optimism for miners of all sizes. Block’s three-nanometer technology chips promise to enhance the efficiency and accessibility of mining operations.
Stratum V2 Announced
On the other hand, addressing concerns about the decentralization of mining, Casey introduced an improved version of Bitcoin’s pooled mining protocol, Stratum V2. Stratum V2, unlike its predecessor, grants individual miners the authority to decide transaction selection for each block, rather than the pools they mine with. This significant development provides miners with more autonomy in pool mining while strengthening control over block extraction.
As Stratum V2 nears completion after an extensive development process, Casey has invited miners to allocate resources to test the protocol. He directed miners to the Stratum V2 mining pool, DEMAND POOL, to evaluate its features and provide feedback on any issues encountered.
Casey’s collaborative effort is part of the industry’s commitment to fostering innovation and overcoming critical barriers to keep the Bitcoin mining ecosystem robust and decentralized.
