Author: slush 2014-06-19 20:26:41
Published on: 2014-06-19T20:26:41+00:00
In an email conversation between Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn and Slush, founder of the mining pool Slush Pool, they discuss the reasons for the lack of decentralisation in mining pools despite the availability of the getblocktemplate (GBT) protocol. Hearn suggests that the reason is due to implementation issues with libblkmaker and other software, which do not support miners connecting to their own node and choosing their own blocks. However, Slush argues that the real reason is the resource-intensive nature of decentralised building of blocks using GBT validation. Validation of shares using GBT requires full validation of every submitted share, making it economically unfeasible for medium-sized pools. Instead, Slush proposes using Stratum + Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) validation on miner side, which would give tools to miners to instantly switch to fallback pools when something goes wrong.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T00:24:31.493008+00:00