The Decentralisation of Bitcoin Mining with Braiins - WBD641

Jan Čapek and Pavel Moravec are the co-founders of Braiins, a
Bitcoin Mining company. In this interview, we discuss Braiins
update to their updated Stratum V2 protocol software for pooled
mining, how it helps solve Bitcoin mining’s centralisation
problem, and why Braiins has given the Stratum software away to
the community as open source.


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The development and growth in pooled Bitcoin mining has been a
critical part of maintaining Bitcoin’s security. The synergies of
scale were always going to affect Bitcoin as it transitioned into
a more mature technology. However, centralisation is an
existential threat to Bitcoin. Mining pools, started in 2010 by
Jan and Pavel, therefore enabled small-scale miners to continue
to gain value from limited hash power, which thereby strengthened
the network's security.


Nevertheless, just as the rise of the mega miners concentrated
the hashrate, so did the rise of major mining pools. In February
over 52% of the hashrate was controlled by just 2 mining pools
(Foundry USA and Antpool). This is not to state that these mining
pools have malevolent intentions. But Bitcoin must always guard
against an attack through trustless mechanisms. Marathon’s
flip-flopping over filtering non-OFAC-compliant transactions in
2021 was a warning.


The solution to the problem lies in the communication protocol
used to connect miners with mining pools. The existing protocol,
Stratum V1, was developed and distributed as open-source software
by Braiins in 2012. Whilst it has successfully supported Bitcoin
mining pools since then, it was in need of an upgrade for a
series of reasons. Such an upgrade enabled this centralisation
issue to be tackled head-on.


Stratum V2 transfers the power for writing new blocks from the
pool operators and into the hands of individual miners. This is
enabled by a sub-protocol within Stratum V2 called the “Job
Negiotator”. The incentive for adoption is that the other updates
enable faster (i.e. more profitable) and more secure
communications. It is an elegant solution built with the same
technical and community-facing ethos as Bitcoin’s open-source
code. Děkuji Braiins!