Decentralizing Bitcoin Mining Pools w/ Bitcoin Mechanic (BTC161)

[@PrestonPysh]

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[@dmpath]

This is an issue which needs much more attention. I had no idea how much power the pools have. Bravo to Ocean for what they're doing.

[@rosstituteuk]

This guy is absolutely fantastic. Sensible, considered and well spoken. Thanks for putting this out, Preston.

[@buffalo241]

Agree. He's very consistent whenever he speaks anywhere that I have heard him.

[@mc-kz8zn]

Fascinating. Please have Bitcoin Mechanic back on your show 9mo’s from now to see how things have played out. Great pod, lot to think about so thanks for bringing this forward.

[@whatsgood22022]

Mining pool decentralization is the single greatest risk to Bitcoin and Stratum v2 addresses it. Now we need to put pressure on every single pool to use the Ocean model or Bitcoin risks losing its resistance to censorship.

[@DanielTroySternthal]

I’ve been listening to you for years . This is probably one of the best I’ve heard . Listened a couple times to try and absorb all the information here .

[@shifu9276]

This needs to be seen by everyone.

[@DeFi-Macrodosing]

Amazing episode, really helps understanding the technical complexities. Thank you

[@weslee511]

The Mechanic is great! Explains very important subjects

[@kevinj5989]

That was a VERY informative interview! I had no idea that rogue miners could mine empty blocks and claim block rewards. Is there an obvious response to why Bitcoin chose an arms-race model of mining (that promotes competition among miners for block rewards and fees and that excludes home PC miners that can't afford the latest generation of mining rigs)? The cooperative "non-arms-race, non-pool model where all miners share in the rewards regardless of who wins the block" model used by Quortal? Thank you!

[@edgeman148]

Thank you so very much for this episode and many more of course; I learned a lot that I was not aware of here.

[@satoshi_corner]

Great pod, Mechanic is one of the good one's

[@davecorley5514]

Very informative interview about an extremely important mining perspective. bitcoin mechanic laid out the real tradeoff: centralized pools create a transaction fee environment that encourages bitcoiners to leave their sats with exchanges’ keys. So Ocean offers a mining environment where transactions that are not bitcoin content are excluded from the template. The Ocean miner gets a lower transaction fee (1-3%?) but the fee rate for that template is conducive to less influence by spam and fiat manipulation. Individual and corporate miners now have a BIG decision to make. Stay with manipulatable pools with slightly higher transaction rewards or move to pools with much smaller chance of fiat template manipulation but lower transaction rewards. This interview helped me understand the problem. It’s essentially a re-hash of the block wars. Why would a miner choose Ocean? There’s financially less incentive to do so, but it does move closer to satoshi’s dream of independent, de-centralized miners.

[@justinsumner5559]

Excellent interview, very informative, well delivered, great stuff!

[@TheRealDerekS]

THE MOST IMPORTANT TOPIC IN BTC! the Achilles heel is Real. We absolutely need to focus on the existential threat embedded at the mining pool level.

[@thaidude]

We need more attention to this issue. Thanks for bringing this up.

[@MothershipVR]

This conversation was way more productive than the toxic twitter comments. Great job

[@christophalex5769]

Where is Trace mayer??? He is so needed right now everything he said is happening in real time

[@pran10000]

what did Trace say?

[@sethbracken]

He embarrassed himself with a shitcoin scheme in 2021 and stopped coming around.

[@pysiakk]

Great rip, very based, thanks!

[@NappyWayz]

1:16:49 Good information

[@eglasb]

Excellent interview!

[@the27thMONKEY]

I'll be keeping an eye out for when lightning payouts are introduced on Ocean. Until then my tiny 2Th/s rig at UK energy prices just doesn't make sense. Once that happens though I'm in.

[@bitcoinmechanic]

Thanks Preston!

[@dutchhungry]

Wow, I know so little. Thanks!

[@chestercopperpot8788]

Smash the like button this is a serious issue!

[@mrbmro3991]

I think I get it and I might be over simplifying it a bit but, cant we just have a 50/50 split in a block between mandatory 50% real transactions and 50% inscriptions for the first batch of however many blocks? and then simply allow a small flood of blocks removing that 50/50 limit and then repeat? after that flood of whatever blocks has gone through, the next batch of blocks will have a 50/50 split of ordinals and real transactions. This way or something similar feels like we can regulate the amount of things getting through

[@antoinedesjardins6752]

Interesting, the binary search model

[@brewbuildsit]

Thank you a million times over for brain dumping.

[@beyondbonesjax]

What can the every day HODLer do to help support Ocean and the purity of the block space/template?

[@krawkraw4999]

Running a node is a start i would assume

[@f.flinstone252]

Preston, very good episode. But I don’t see links to ocean, bitcoin mechanic and luke in description. Please add, people need to find them.

[@LokanJokan]

why on earth would anyone mine with anyone else?

[@builderbuilder616]

Ill give you an example. If you mine by yourself, you might mine 1 block after 150 years. If you mine with 1000 other miners. One of yous will mine a block every 54 days and you'll get paid a portion of that block Which is better? Mining 1 block every 150 years, or mining 1/1000th of a block every 54 days?

[@HowardARoark]

Very interesting guy. Its quite positive what he said towards the end that miners will naturally gravitate away from the big centralized KYC mining pools and join freedom oriented pools like Ocean that allow filtering of the blockchain spam. After all this is how Bitcoin has been built as money, ie. by many people including even some billionaires making the free choice to move their money into it. I was one who made that choice myself, to me it was a no-brainer.

[@arfarf152]

great talk! thank you 🙏

[@paulc.3333]

Individuals can be easily bribed. Good interview.

[@sektormonax9718]

The miners are not the same as they were.Шахтеры уже не те, что были раньше

[@Benjamintappan]

I paid for no ads, and now I have to listen to this milkshake bullshit? Screw that

[@stephenzzz]

Great interview, anyone know GrassFedBitcoin view on ETF, if he considers good/bad i.e. leads to eventual regulatory capture etc?

[@pran10000]

Wish I could understand this. Sounds like a scary problem though.

[@meyroakabigrem1679]

Bitcoin is a global revolution in terms of how we store value. Bitcoin (BTC) for money. Filecoin (FIL) for decentralised data storage. Both vital for humanity. If I had any Sol gains I would be now re-investing into Filecoin but either way Bitcoin is the big daddy where the big boys of finance are about to deploy.

[@JeremyHelm]

Folder of time

[@JeremyHelm]

1:32 problem slash definition, before solution

[@JeremyHelm]

4:23 you don't want to be in that position

[@JeremyHelm]

5:25 pools are necessary for everyone except the largest players (is there a parallel here to torrents? Not just a technically, but in game theory?)

[@JeremyHelm]

6:11 decentralized pools?

[@JeremyHelm]

7:12 block templates

[@MrCoreyTexas]

How's that working out bro? All the coinbases are going to one address and all kinds of mining pools are using the exact or almost exact same template? I seriously doubt they are using PSBT's to sign a big multi input transaction

[@danielkeenan1984]

Ok , could you run that all past me again 😮

[@weslee511]

This discussion highlights the need for transparency and decentralization.....and the need for all users of bitcoin to understand the basics of bitcoin. If all users dont understand they will easily be tricked by bad actors leadung to the failure of btc as perfect money. This fact alone demonstrates the very high likelihood of failure of btc original mission. It will get controlled, fractional reserved, and twisted to benefit the few connected....just like the gold standard. Most people dont care and are disinterested and will trade responsibility for lack of control

[@youbian]

“The pools are what’s relevant, not hashing”

[@mastablasta9x]

I'm not sure that you can consider money as "being locked" in blockchains, because if nobody wanted to buy things on those blockchains then the value locked is 0. It's not locked but estimated through current price of those crypto assets, right?

[@jordanorta7476]

Can't believe people trust Jack Dorsey. Insane. Just because he is working on BTC doesn't erase his past. Iykyk

[@gandolfgrey5385]

It's an interesting view and pool however the fact that they aren't finding blocks means it's not really worth switching. And this is the problem with new pools on all POW coins. If there are no incentives people don't move

[@uncoolhodler]

Consider the fact that the original miners of Bitcoin had no incentive. They loved what it represented. But I get your point.

[@gandolfgrey5385]

@@uncoolhodler yes they didn't need incentive because the miners were less power hungry and there wasn't an industrial competition for building space and rewards. Now that btc is centralized between some of the most massive farms it's a way different landscape. As an individual with less than a petahash I cannot recieve less rewards on a feel good emotional non repayment scenario. We can go to the maxi argument all the time but that's just not the reality of today. Saying the way it was or anything along those lines is like saying if my aunt had Nuts.... it doesn't matter because it's not reality

[@uncoolhodler]

@@gandolfgrey5385 Totally understandable. But the guest made some great points. I'm sure if the core devs will figure it out in time. Forking would be the nuclear option.

[@philfortner1805]

Pools have no power, all the power lays with miners because they can change pools in literally 10 seconds. So good pool becomes stupid pool then it loses 90% of its miners in a week.

[@mutdogg21]

Not exactly true, especially for the large public miners. They have fewer options due to regulatory compliance.

[@thepr0m3th3an]

Didn't Ocean start censoring mixed transactions? I can't support that.

[@shifu9276]

He mentions samurai if that’s what you’re referring to.

[@jet1748]

Scamourai is being very misleading in its complaint because insists on an op return over 40, when all they need is 2-8. Ocean uses knots wich allows 40. Scamourai could easily lower their op return because of their ego and dislike for Luke. They are bad actors in the space.

[@sektormonax9718]

I've been in the miner since 2007 - 2009. The idea was simple, everyone can. now it can be either rich or a company . the voice has not been worth even $ 1 for a long time. And you're arguing ! You have already sold everything back in 2017!!!

[@runitupfaster]

Q: What happens when there is no physical money and identity fraud becomes rampant?? A: You will need an implant to access your funds on the blockchain

[@dylan6091]

Or have a hardware wallet like a normal person...

[@loladelawoyin5728]

The Bitcoin protocol has been and would remain an open protocol. Censoring certain transactions because they aren't "true transactions" leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Inscriptions or not, the protocol should be free of any form of censorship- My 2 sats

[@jet1748]

You don’t seem to understand what censoring means.

[@jet1748]

Fixing an unintended bug, which is hindering actual btc transactions from being mined, is not censoring, it’s applying the intended use of its intended purpose. Was btc hard fork to stop/fix the inflation bug censoring the network from billions of btc from being produced? It was a bug fix that if it did not happen would have broken btc. If you call 911 endlessly with no emergency, just to blare a siren to tie up the line and prevent emergencies from being reported would you consider it censoring when they filtered out your calls from the 911 switchboard?

[@BitcoinOnlyCentral]

Filtering spam isn’t censoring. If people are smearing poopy on your building you should be able to prevent or remove