For years, rumors have circulated that Bitcoin’s largest mining machine producer has secretly centralized a majority of Bitcoin’s hash energy. The idea is right down to greater than a easy remark of the emblem stamped on most mining instances.
No, skeptics assume that Bitmain’s pool itself — not simply its machines — secretly creates the overwhelming majority of blocks which can be added to Bitcoin’s ledger.
A sleuth discovered a clue in Antpool’s block template: A manually prioritized transaction instantly after the 6.25 BTC block reward or ‘coinbase’ transaction. This new analysis by pseudonymous Bitcoin developer 0xb10c seemingly confirms long-rumored practices by Antpool hiding its large operation below the names of ostensibly unbiased swimming pools.
In brief, it warns that regardless of tens of hundreds of decentralized nodes, Bitcoin would possibly truly be fairly centralized from a mining perspective.
One template and custodian for supposedly unbiased swimming pools
Particularly, 0xb10c detected that BTC.com Pool, Binance Pool, Poolin, EMCD, and Rawpool present indicators of utilizing Antpool’s methodology for prioritizing the post-coinbase transaction.
Antpool may additionally use a sixth pool, Braiins, however 0xb10c was nonetheless analyzing its merkle branches as of the analysis publication time. Almost similar merkle branches would possibly point out that these 5 or 6 swimming pools typically use the very same template as Antpool for choosing transactions to incorporate in a block.
In different phrases, all of those swimming pools typically use Bitmain’s machines, typically assemble transactions based on Bitmain’s block template, typically prioritize the identical manually-configured post-coinbase transaction as Bitmain, and infrequently ship coinbase and transaction charges to the identical custodian as Bitmain.
It actually makes Bitcoin look a bit of centralized.
Has Bitmain secretly centralized Bitcoin’s proof-of-work?
Based in 2013, Bitmain is likely one of the oldest repeatedly operated Bitcoin corporations. It’s additionally gigantic and 6 years in the past sought to IPO for over a billion {dollars}.
Each miner is aware of that Bitmain machines generate practically all hash energy on the Bitcoin community. What’s not widespread information is the dimensions of Bitmain’s coinbase- and fee-sharing pool, AntPool.
In accordance with its publicly-reported hash charge, Antpool by Bitmain claims to generate simply one-quarter of Bitcoin’s hash charge. Nevertheless, 0xb10c suspects it’d secretly management a majority.
As a result of Bitcoin’s mining rewards arrive randomly to the only miner who guesses the Bitcoin problem threshold’s lottery-like successful quantity each 10 minutes, miners pool collectively to share work and common out these random 3.125 BTC payouts.
Previous to the halving, coinbase rewards have been 6.25 BTC. On April 20, 2024, that quantity halved to three.125.
In the present day, simply three mining swimming pools management the majority of Bitcoin’s hash charge. Nevertheless, new analysis is suggesting that Bitmain’s Antpool has been disguising its work and submitting its successful blocks below the identify of third-party swimming pools.
That Bitmain has a near-monopoly on Bitcoin’s bodily equipment is widespread information. By far probably the most prevalent mining rigs performing proof-of-work hashing across the globe are Bitmain machines.
Regardless of its famously poor customer support and product high quality variability, its proprietary ASIC applied sciences have made its rigs unstoppably ubiquitous.
Learn extra: Right here’s why decentralized finance is definitely very centralized
Corroborating analysis on Bitmain’s Antpool dominance
Mononaut discovered extra proof that appears to help 0xb10c’s principle that Antpool would possibly secretly use third-party swimming pools to cloak Bitmain’s dominance.
Mononaut traced coinbase rewards from mining swimming pools AntPool, F2Pool, Binance Pool, Braiins, BTCcom, SECPOOL, Poolin, ULTIMUSPOOL and 1THash, and Luxor. He discovered suspicious ranges of cooperation from these supposedly aggressive entities in allocating coinbase rewards to a shared — probably Antpool-controlled — custodian.
0xb10c couldn’t affirm that SECPOOL and SigmaPool solely cloned AntPool’s template, though they appeared to share an analogous template. In all, it appears unlikely that as much as 9 main bitcoin mining swimming pools use a shared custodian for coinbase rewards except a single entity is behind all of their operations.
Antpool had little to say in regards to the suspicious actions or analysis experiences by 0xb10c and Mononaut. Its most up-to-date English-language tweet solely referenced ‘making every hash count.’
Marty Bent, Matt Odell, and Matt Corallo mentioned the allegations throughout a prolonged podcast. Corallo agreed with 0xb10c and Mononaut: “There’s one pool that has near 50% of hash power.”
In abstract, if Antpool doesn’t management greater than half of Bitcoin’s hashrate by way of collusion with or management over different mining swimming pools, it appears to be getting fairly shut. Bitcoin developer 0xb10c in addition to Mononaut discovered proof suggesting that Antpool and its alleged associates would possibly management a majority of Bitcoin’s common hashrate.
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