The Decentralisation of Bitcoin Mining with Braiins - WBD641
The Peter McCormack Show
Peter McCormack
4.7 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2023
⏱️ 92 minutes
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Summary
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!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What is the end goal for V2 is allowing miners to build the block themselves, |
| 0:09.7 | but at the same time use the money aspect of pool mining. |
| 0:14.3 | The money would be still the same, |
| 0:16.6 | but the transaction selection selection would be distributed, |
| 0:20.7 | therefore more secure for the home network. |
| 0:24.0 | Hello there, how are you all? |
| 0:26.0 | You have a good week. |
| 0:27.0 | We're just a few days into our UK sprint here. |
| 0:30.0 | We've already made some banging shows. |
| 0:31.0 | Cannot wait to get these out for you. |
| 0:33.4 | Also, we're in the final stages of planning |
| 0:36.2 | for our Friday event next week. |
| 0:38.1 | Very excited about that. |
| 0:39.2 | Can't wait to see some of you down here in Bedford. |
| 0:41.3 | Anyway, welcome to the What Bitcoin did |
| 0:42.8 | podcast which is brought to you by IRS Energy, the largest NASDAQ listed |
| 0:46.8 | Bitcoin miner using 100% renewable energy. And today we've got a little bit of |
| 0:51.3 | a different show. We haven't been making so many technical shows recently, |
| 0:54.6 | but for our first interview in the UK, |
| 0:56.0 | we asked Jan and Pavil from Brains |
| 0:57.7 | to come into Bedford and talk about Stratum V2. |
| 1:00.5 | Now, minor centralization is a concern in Bitcoin. |
... |
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