Lost in the shuffle of the GameStop saga from last week was some good Bitcoin-related content that I'd like to bring to the surface for you freaks. The team from Deribit asked Karim Helmy from Coinmetrics to give a breakdown of Stratum V2, how it differs from Stratum V1, and why it would help further decentralize the Bitcoin mining landscape. If you're interested in mining, how mining pools work, why they exist, and how they may look in the future, I highly recommend you take the time to check out Karim's article. He does an incredible job of laying everything out in this short article.

The benefits of transitioning existing mining pool protocol infrastructure to Stratum V2 cannot be overstated. It would eliminate the potential for pool operators to censor transactions as they would no longer control transaction selection and ordering, individual miners would. It would make out-of-band payments impossible, ensuring that individual miners aren't being taken advantage of by pool operators who collude with individual parties on the side to include transactions in a block. Furthermore, it would eliminate the possibility of someone highjacking a miner's hashrate and claiming it as their own due to the transition to encrypted communications between an individual miner and the pool.

Combined, these benefits would strengthen the Bitcoin network and Bitcoin mining companies. Two things that every bitcoiner should strive for. The only thing that we need to figure out is how to make a smooth transition to this new protocol. I look forward to learning about some proposed adoption methods and keeping you freaks abreast of the developments.

Onward!

Final thought...

This Nor'Easter has flooded my village by the sea.