Published on: 2013-08-22T15:30:13+00:00
The Bitcoin development community has proposed removing the getwork API and replacing it with a more decentralized and efficient alternative called getblocktemplate. This suggestion has raised concerns about the impact on individual novice miners and the potential favoring of pool operators and private mining interests. However, it has been noted that getblocktemplate offers everything that getwork does and more, making it a better choice for mining. The consensus among the community is to remove getwork but replace it with a proper getblocktemplate miner, such as Luke's bfgminer, to ensure the provision of a full network node. This change aims to address technical problems and provide a more efficient and decentralized mining solution.The proposal to remove the getwork RPC from Bitcoind is driven by its declining usage. Currently, most users on the mainnet utilize pools instead of directly connecting to Bitcoind via getwork. For those who do solo mine, they communicate with Bitcoind through a pool server using getblocktemplate or other methods. Solo mining on the mainnet using getwork has been found to result in delays and issues. While getwork may still work on the testnet, there are alternative options available, such as open-source pool servers or p2pool. As a result, supporting getwork is no longer necessary. Jeff Garzik, a Senior Software Engineer at BitPay, has proposed the removal of getwork and is seeking feedback to ensure important use cases are not overlooked.In August 2013, there was strong opposition to the removal of getwork from Frank F., who argued that getwork was crucial for maintaining the peer-to-peer nature of Bitcoin. He believed that removing getwork would favor pool operators and private mining interests, potentially leading to a monopolistic or cartel model. Frank also expressed concern about denying novice miners the ability to mine at a small scale, which could have negative consequences for Bitcoin's future. In response, Pieter clarified that getblocktemplate addressed the technical issues of getwork and offered even more decentralization-friendly features.In conclusion, while the removal of getwork could lead Bitcoin towards a monopolistic model, it is argued that getblocktemplate provides the same functionality and more. Instead of completely abandoning getwork, efforts should be made to address and fix its technical problems. This would ensure a more efficient and decentralized mining solution for the Bitcoin network.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T05:41:10.522292+00:00