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On Tuesday, Nov 28, legendary Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr announced the launch of OCEAN mining, which closed a $6.2M round led by Block Head Jack Dorsey as a new type of mining pool that aims to decentralize bitcoin mining.

As Luke put it in a communique on Oct 31, OCEAN is "a new type of pool that enables miners to be truly miners again."

Bitcoin mining today is primarily done via pooled mining, which requires miners to point their hashrate to a mining pool that aggregates this towards mining blocks and subsequently makes payouts to these miners. Nearly all mining pools communicate using a now outdated protocol introduced in 2012 called Stratum V1, which only lets the pool have the final say on which transactions ultimately make it into a block.

In the aforementioned communique from Oct 31, Luke highlights that "the centralization and overreach of other pool operators has changed Bitcoin to the point where the security model of Bitcoin is at high risk." Adding, "Pools operate like custodial bank accounts and have the ability to decide who can and who can't use Bitcoin."

It is for these reasons that increasing efforts are underway to decentralize bitcoin mining to address the issues with the existing Stratum V1 protocol, the consequences of having dominant mining pools in certain regions, and having mining done by a handful of pools.

OCEAN, a Wyoming-based company, co-founded by Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr, is a non-custodial pool that requires only a bitcoin address to join, and is the successor of the Eligius bitcoin mining pool (a popular zero-fee mining pool that had mined over 11,631 blocks), which Luke founded and was operated from 2010-2017.

Since its launch, OCEAN has successfully found two blocks and operates at a hash rate of around 422.8 Ph/s. Additionally, as part of its commitment to transparency, the company displays its node policy and block templates on its website.

Over the last few weeks, discussions around handling data such as inscriptions on-chain have surfaced, with OCEAN being accused censoring these transactions, but seems to be a misunderstanding.

Due to OCEAN running a parallel implantation of the bitcoin node software, Knots, maintained by Luke, certain transactions in the above bucket go beyond the default maximum 42-byte datacarriersize limit (responsible for dictating the maximum size of data in data carrier transactions that get relayed and mined) which cause them to be excluded from the blocks it mines.

Currently, there are no Stratum V2 mining pools that engage in pooled mining, however, OCEAN intends to fully transition into using Stratum V2 and allow for payouts to miners over the Lightning Network.

As posted by Luke on Dec 8 on X, formerly Twitter, "OCEAN is on a path to decentralization, and very soon, we are going to be in a position where hashers will be able to fully participate as miners and perform the intelligent parts of mining such as deciding which version of node software to run and what filters or other policies to apply to block template construction."

Additionally, OCEAN is on a mission to build on its three core principles of being non-custodial, transparent, and permissionless by focusing its efforts in 2024, amongst other things, on "leveraging and improving Stratum V2" and incorporating "Lightning payouts, which will solve the dust problem for small miners."

The options for miners in 2024 are promising. The overall landscape of efforts focused on decentralizing bitcoin mining is also on a positive trend and, undoubtedly, a welcomed change for all miners globally.

I'm a Nigerian Bitcoin core contributor and the CEO of the Bitcoin venture capital firm Recursive Capital. I also serve as a board member of trust, a non-profit focused on training African bitcoin and lightning developers via Btrust builders and growing the African Bitcoin ecosystem.

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OCEAN Aims To Further Bitcoin Mining Decentralisation In 2024 - Forbes