Industry expert Ian Descôteaux from Pow.Re discusses evidence of pool consolidation, risks to Bitcoin, and potential solutions for decentralization. This podcast explores the growing centralization of Bitcoin mining pools, focusing on proxy pools and their potential impact on the network.
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
02:48 Checksum's bio
03:34 Canada & South America hash rate
06:42 Mining pool centralization
09:14 Proxy pools
11:57 Proxy pool diagram
13:57 F2Pool use proxy?
15:14 F2Pool block template
16:09 Cobo yield & risk
19:31 Merkle tree evidence
25:28 UTXO accelerator
29:59 Selfish mining & 51%
33:35 Covenants
36:26 Antpool incentives
38:38 Block withholding attacks
40:17 How to fix?
43:32 Are new pools likely?
45:52 Final thoughts
Published twice weekly, "The Mining Pod" interviews the best builders and operators in the Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining landscape. Subscribe to get notifications when we publish interviews on Tuesday and a news show on Friday!