It’s tough to discover a extra basic risk to Bitcoin’s continued existence than mining centralization. If —say— there are just a few mining swimming pools, there’s a very actual risk that these organizations face regulatory stress of the type that exchanges have additionally needed to take care of: they may very well be pressured to solely embody KYC’ed transactions into blocks. Since censorship resistance is arguably its core worth proposition, I critically doubt that Bitcoin would, on this state of affairs, have a lot long-term viability in any respect.
To that finish, it was nice to see Ocean launch DATUM (Decentralized Various Templates for Common Mining) this weekend. Just like Stratum V2 (implemented by Demand Pool), DATUM permits miners (or: “hashers”) to pick the transactions they embody within the blocks they discover, whereas nonetheless splitting the block reward with different customers of the pool. In different phrases, hashers get the good thing about pooled mining, with out having to outsource transaction choice to the Ocean pool operators, thus making it tougher to use regulation. (It’s a lot simpler to control just a few massive companies —mining swimming pools— in a handful of jurisdictions, than it’s to control many smaller companies and people —hashers— from all over the world.)
In fact, the adversarial mindset will acknowledge that this doesn’t in itself clear up the issue of mining centralization in its entirety. Most clearly, draconian lawmakers may finally simply ban this kind of pooled mining altogether. In addition to, it’s not likely clear that there’s a demand from hashers to assemble their very own blocks within the first place– although which may in fact rapidly change if and when there in actual fact is regulatory stress that stops swimming pools from together with sure transactions in blocks. (And Ocean is offering an incentive for hashers to pick their very own transactions by chopping charges for those who make use of the brand new characteristic.)
Both means, DATUM is a crucial step in the correct path. If nothing else, it ought to take away a variety of the issues of Ocean themselves refusing to incorporate sure “spam” transactions of their blocks: now each hasher can determine for themselves what transactions they do and don’t wish to embody.
The tougher it’s to thwart Bitcoin’s censorship resistance, the brighter Bitcoin’s future appears to be like.
