It is difficult to find a more fundamental threat to the continued existence of Bitcoin than the centralization of mining. If – for example – there are only a few mining pools, there is a very real possibility that these organizations will face regulatory pressures of the kind that exchanges have had to deal with as well: they may have to include only KYC transactions in the blocks. Since resistance to censorship is its core value proposition, I highly doubt that Bitcoin, in this scenario, will have long-term viability at all.
To that end, it was great to see the ocean He releases DATUM (Decentralized Alternative Templates for Universal Mining) launches this weekend. Similar to Stratum V2 (which is implemented by Demand Pool), DATUM allows miners (or: “hackers”) to choose which transactions they include in the blocks they find, while still splitting the block reward with other users of the pool. In other words, hashers benefit from pooled mining, without having to outsource transaction selection to Ocean Pool operators, making it more difficult to enforce regulation. (It is much easier to regulate a few large companies – mining pools – in a few jurisdictions, than to regulate many small companies and individuals – hackers – from all over the world.)
Of course, the adversarial mindset will realize that this does not in itself solve the problem of mining centralization in its entirety. Obviously, strict lawmakers may eventually ban this type of pool mining altogether. Additionally, it’s not really clear that there is a demand for hasers to create their own blocks in the first place – although this could of course change quickly if and when there is in fact regulatory pressure preventing pools from including certain transactions in blocks. (Ocean is offering an incentive for hashers to choose their own transactions by lowering fees for those who take advantage of the new feature.)
Either way, DATUM is an important step in the right direction. If nothing else, it should remove a lot of the concerns about Ocean itself refusing to include some “spam” transactions in its blocks: now each hasher can decide for themselves which transactions it does and doesn’t want to include.
The more difficult it becomes to thwart Bitcoin’s resistance to censorship, the brighter Bitcoin’s future looks.
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