Hello World,
Lets start with facts instead of opinion. Mining pool distribution in last 24
hours:
Binance - 16%
F2Pool - 15%
Huobi - 11%
AntPool - 10%
ViaBTC - 10%
Poolin - 9%
BTC.com - 8%
This is 80% and things are not really different even if look at last 2 weeks.
Most of the pools have been reusing address for coinbase transaction and
sharing name in coinbase text.
Their opinion on "Taproot": https://taprootactivation.com/
I won't comment on the origin of these mining pools or history. Maybe things
will improve with Stratum v2, lets look at miners but its difficult to know the
exact location of miners considering no such details in protocol and people can
use Tor, VPN, proxy etc. Mining pools can be non-KYC or have their own
understanding with miners. Few countries increased their involvement in Bitcoin
mining recently and governments:
Russia
Iran
Venezuela
Pakistan
China, US and few others are already involved from years. Maybe others that we
don't know and were not highlighted in mainstream media. What are the risks and
rewards involved in bitcoin mining:
Rewards:
Block reward (6.25 BTC right now) + transaction fees
Freedom to include transactions (can censor few transactions if they want)
Involved in signaling for soft forks (Bitcoin Development)
Risks:
BTCUSD (Can be hedged)
Hashrate and Difficulty (Can be hedged)
What are the opportunities we provide when mining pools (businesses) are asked
to agree/disagree on some soft fork, follow with communication and then
signaling?
Politics and misinformation for few months or years
Forked coin as add-on in some cases
Delay Bitcoin development
Maybe convince everyone Bitcoin needs no improvement
Others
Who can sponsor for the above mentioned things?
Government
Scammers with money and time who were even able to remove whitepaper
Altcoin foundations
Is this FUD? No. These are possible issues related to mining pools and we need
to plan accordingly. Many people are concerned about UASF and prefer future
markets. I don't agree with them and reasons are simple. Changes in Bitcoin
Protocol doesn't need futures markets or tokens, both can be easily manipulated
by traders and exchanges to make profits. Where is the "Adversarial Thinking"
involved in changing Bitcoin Protocol and considering involvement of mining
pools?
Already a long email so will share the link to a recent question I asked on
"Bitcoin" Stackexchange about identifying which mining pool mined a block:
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/103409/identify-which-mining-pool-mined-a-block
I am hopeful things will improve and interested to contribute more. Will be
helpful if someone could also answer why do we have 30% vulnerable nodes in
Bitcoin network?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/lb6dpi/vulnerable_bitcoin_nodes/
Thanks.
Will end the email on a positive note with something that inspires me a lot:
Satoshi's lesson is that you don't need to be the next Einstein in order to
change the world. Nor do you need to have much money, or influence with the
world's "movers & shakers". You just need to put in the effort. Satoshi,
probably just an ordinary hobbyist like anyone here, saw that something was
lacking in the Universe, and he fought tooth-and-nail for 2+ years until this
imperfection was corrected. This is what makes Satoshi and his work my greatest
inspiration.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5092492.0
--
Prayank
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