It is difficult to find a more fundamental threat to Bitcoin’s continued existence than mining centralization. If there are—say, only a few—mining pools, there is a very real possibility that these organizations face the kind of regulatory pressure that exchanges also have to deal with: they are required only to have KYC transactions included in the block. Can be forced. Since censorship resistance is arguably its core value proposition, I seriously doubt that Bitcoin would have long-term viability in this scenario.
Finally, it was great to see the ocean launch DATUM (Decentralized Alternative Template for Universal Mining) this weekend. Similar to Stratum V2 (implemented by Demand Pool), DATUM allows miners (or: “hashers”) to select the transactions included in the blocks they discover, while still splitting the block reward with other users of the pool. Does. In other words, Hashers get the benefit of pooled mining without having to outsource transaction selection to Ocean Pool operators, making regulation more difficult to enforce. (It is much easier to regulate a few large businesses – mining pools – in a handful of jurisdictions, than to regulate the many small businesses and individuals – hashers – around the world.)
Of course, the adversarial mindset would recognize that this in itself does not completely solve the problem of mining centralization. Most obviously, stricter lawmakers could eventually ban this type of aggregated mining altogether. Furthermore, it’s not really clear whether there is demand on the part of hashers to create their own blocks in the first place – although this could certainly change quickly if there actually is regulatory pressure that forces pools to block certain transactions. Prevents inclusion. (And Ocean is providing incentives for hashers to select their own transactions by cutting fees for those using the new feature.)
Either way, DATUM is an important step in the right direction. If nothing else, this should alleviate a lot of the concerns Ocean had about refusing to include certain “spam” transactions in their blocks: now each hasher can decide for themselves which transactions they block. And don’t want to include them.
The harder it is to thwart Bitcoin’s censorship resistance, the brighter the future looks for Bitcoin.
