Episode notes
In Bitcoin, Explained 96, Aaron and Sjors discuss some recent innovations in mining, and in particular mining decentralization. Specifically, they discuss the Stratum V2 and DATUM mining protocols to decentralize transaction selection in mining pools, the open source hardware Bitaxe miner, and some recent proposals to make decentralized mining pools like P2Pool more viable.
Chapters
00:00:00 Introduction and mining decentralization
00:06:48 Why mining centralization threatens censorship resistance
00:11:10 Stratum V2: miners choose transactions
00:14:18 DATUM and the limits of pool decentralization
00:20:14 Why predictable payouts favor large pools
00:23:26 Bitaxe: open source hobby mining
00:30:46 P2Pool: mining without a central operator
00:35:14 Reviving P2Pool: latency and payout challenges
00:39:13 Lightning swaps and ecash for mining payouts
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This episode’s sponsor: CoinKite, maker of the COLDCARD.
Aaron’s Nostr: npub1art8cs66ffvnqns5zs5qa9fwlctmusj5lj38j94lv0ulw0j54wjqhpm0w5
Sjors’ Nostr: npub1v25jqj332n630klwtqeqxgyrjl4alw4phmluhu2x6lcxzwy9m03suqexw3
