Bitcoin Mining Pool distribution monthly reports

[notblox1]

Month of February is here and it's time to see what is happening with Bitcoin mining pools.
FoundryUSA continues to be biggest pool and it's increased a lot since last month, now it has over 32.5% of hashrate and with second place Antpool they both have over 52% of hashrate!
This is first time in a long time that we see two pools have this much hash power, so it's time to move miners to other pools to help decentrlaization.
Third place is now shared by Binance and F2pool that have same 13.59% of hashrate, that are followed by ViaBTC pool that have 7.8% hashrate.
All other pools are much smaller in size and I don't see anything interesting to say about them.


https://mempool.space/graphs/mining/pools

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[FP91G]

Data Shows 50% Of Bitcoin Hashrate Controlled By Two Mining Pools
The graph shows that over 80% of Bitcoin’s mining power is concentrated among just 5 pools. This contrasts with the beginning of 2022, when these five mining pools barely exceeded 60% of the hashrate.
https://bitcoinist.com/data-shows-50-of-bitcoin-hashrate-controlled-by-two-mining-pools/
Centralization in bitcoin mining is increasing rapidly.

[notblox1]

Data Shows 50% Of Bitcoin Hashrate Controlled By Two Mining Pools

This is old data from last month, and situation is different now, if you cared to look yourself this two pools now have around 46% of hashrate that is less than 50%.
Two mining pool means more centralized but this is not two people mining, it's many people joined together in this pools and thy can switch pools anytime.

Month of Mach is here and time for quick look at the state of mining pools.
Foundry USA is still biggest pool with more than 27% of hashrate but that is much less than they had month before.
Antpool is in second place with almost 19% of hashrate that is similar like last month, but we have switch on third place with comeback of F2Poll that has 16% hashrate.
Binance slipped to fourth place with 10.59% hashrate, followed by ViaBTC and BTC.com pools.
All other pools are smaller in size and I don't see anything unusual.


https://mempool.space/graphs/mining/pools

[notblox1]

New month is here and this is time to check the state of bitcoin mining pools.
There is no change in first place with FoundryUSA having almost 31% of total hashrate, that is few percent more than last month.
AntPool is in second place and they increased hashrate to more than 25%, this means that FoundryUSA and AntPool currently have around 56% of hashrate, this is not good at all!
F2Pool is in third place with almost 13% hasharte that is few percent less than last month, and it is followed by Binance pool in fourth place with 9.5%.
ViaBTC is only smaller mining pool that have more than 5% of hashrate, and all other pools have less.
This is maybe worst case of centralization of mining pools since I follow this subject from 2020, and I hope it wont get worse.


https://mempool.space/graphs/mining/pools

[mikeywith]

This is maybe worst case of centralization of mining pools since I follow this subject from 2020, and I hope it wont get worse.

It depends on how you actually look at it, this is not the first time where two entities alone have more than 50% of the total hasharate, a few years ago Bitmain as an entity (antpool, btc.com and Viabtc) had 30-35% and along with Binance or f2pool they had more than half the total hashrate, so pretty similar to what is happening now, in fact it was even worse since those pools operated in the same country.

This however does not concern me more than the actual hashrate physical location, it went from China to now the U.S hosting half the hashrate, things like blacklisting certain addresses due to U.S sanctions only started happening when hashrate moved to the U.S, I hate both U.S and Chinese governments (more like I hate every government out there) but the U.S is worse in this regards, I think now if we have no choice but to mine to U.S or China pool, China pool would be better.

[kano]

This is maybe worst case of centralization of mining pools since I follow this subject from 2020, and I hope it wont get worse.

Clearly not the highest however ...

BTCGuild had a massive % of all mining for a long time.
Here's the months they mined over 1000 blocks and estimated % of all bitcoin blocks (assuming 144 a day) for that month:


2013
Feb 1050 26%
Mar 1749 39%
Apr 1879 43%
May 1772 40%
Jun 1222 28%
Jul 1236 27%
Aug 1552 35%
Sep 1805 42%
Oct 1754 39%
Nov 1454 34%
Dec 1488 33%

2014
Jan 1300 29%

[NotFuzzyWarm]

It should also be pointed out that Foundry is not a pool per-se. They mine strictly for themselves and smaller farms that buy gear from them and have it hosted by Foundry. My guess is that the hosted farms are splitting the blocks w/Foundry so in one sense it *is* a pool. Just a huge private one...

As for tx censoring - only Marathon tried doing that last year. They soon stopped that when they saw no one else was censoring tx's and realized it was costing them potential income.

[kano]

Well, the real issue that makes his analysis pointless is the fact that no large 'pool' would be willing to lose most of their income by trying to fuck over BTC.

Every full node has the BTC rules and would reject any blocks mined by any large pools that break those rules.

While that leads to a 'fork', even if that fork has 60% of BTC mining, the remaining % of BTC mining and the exchanges, will all stay on the valid fork.
This has even happened before, in July 2015, however the reason was stupid code, but the result was a large % of BTC mining off on their own, ignored, fork until they realised their stupidity.

The other option is to attempt to mine all blocks, ignoring all other miners, which is 'possible' with 51% or more of the BTC hash rate, and thus decide all transactions that get confirmed.
Again I cannot see this happening without BTC price crashing and thus their income crashing.

[mikeywith]

Again I cannot see this happening without BTC price crashing and thus their income crashing.

Indeed, there is no incentives for any pool or large miners to screw with BTC, the rewards will be a lot less than the risk taken but any one of those entities since those have so much at stake, however, there is valid concern in terms of the "law", so mining pools that operate whiting the same country could be "forced"to do some stupid things just to obey the laws and regulation.

[notblox1]

It depends on how you actually look at it, this is not the first time where two entities alone have more than 50% of the total hasharate, a few years ago Bitmain as an entity (antpool, btc.com and Viabtc) had 30-35% and along with Binance or f2pool they had more than half the total hashrate, so pretty similar to what is happening now, in fact it was even worse since those pools operated in the same country.

It's not the first time for two mining pools have over 50% but it never happened for two of them to have over 56% like it is now.
Few percent is a big number that makes a difference for someone who wants to perform some kind of attack on Bitcoin, even if they are in different locations.
I would like much more to have three or more pools sharing around 50% of hashrate.

Clearly not the highest however ...

I said it was highest number since I am following mining pools in this topic, that started from end of July 2020.
We always criticized altcoins for having centralized mining pools, so I dont see why we cant do the same thing for Bitcoin.

It should also be pointed out that Foundry is not a pool per-se. They mine strictly for themselves and smaller farms that buy gear from them and have it hosted by Foundry. My guess is that the hosted farms are splitting the blocks w/Foundry so in one sense it *is* a pool. Just a huge private one...

I know it's not a single guy or company who is controlling all this hash power but it is still sort of centralization of mining power.

Indeed, there is no incentives for any pool or large miners to screw with BTC, the rewards will be a lot less than the risk taken but any one of those entities since those have so much at stake, however, there is valid concern in terms of the "law", so mining pools that operate whiting the same country could be "forced"to do some stupid things just to obey the laws and regulation.

This is assumption, someone could perform attack even if there is no financial incentive, if they have unlimited funds and printing machine like governments.

[mikeywith]

This is assumption, someone could perform attack even if there is no financial incentive, if they have unlimited funds and printing machine like governments.

But that has nothing to do with hashrate distribution between pools unless you think that the government is using public mining pools and even worse, spreading their hashrate between more than one pool, your concern is valid but not related to the subject, you are talking about 2 pools having 56% of the total hashrate, those two pools need to work together, run the same code and plan for the same attack, so this brings us back to the original "assumption", what does Bitmain get from screwing with BTC when everything Bitmain related depends on BTC?

If an entity is trying to perform an attack with no financial incentive then they would more likely use their own "unknown" pool, the fact that the largest pools are public pools suggests that only said pools can perform the attack, and thus, they would need a financial incentive.

[kano]

...

Indeed, there is no incentives for any pool or large miners to screw with BTC, the rewards will be a lot less than the risk taken but any one of those entities since those have so much at stake, however, there is valid concern in terms of the "law", so mining pools that operate whiting the same country could be "forced"to do some stupid things just to obey the laws and regulation.

This is assumption, someone could perform attack even if there is no financial incentive, if they have unlimited funds and printing machine like governments.

"could" is just another version of "no one would do this, but lets pretend it's possible, so I can write something people will think is interesting"

No Govt has unlimited funds to attack bitcoin, maybe it was possible many years ago, but no longer possible.
Bitcoin is too large, and too well spread out around the world.

The side effect of any breaking of BTC rules would be to create a fork that current bitcoin miners would simply ignore.

The other option would be to build (currently) over 170EH of miners (1700000 x 100TH) in secret then get some massive power source (over 5.6GW) facility and have it mine bitcoin for weeks ... yeah not gonna happen either.

[notblox1]

But that has nothing to do with hashrate distribution between pools unless you think that the government is using public mining pools and even worse, spreading their hashrate between more than one pool, your concern is valid but not related to the subject, you are talking about 2 pools having 56% of the total hashrate, those two pools need to work together, run the same code and plan for the same attack, so this brings us back to the original "assumption", what does Bitmain get from screwing with BTC when everything Bitmain related depends on BTC?

I don't know exactly what governments are doing but I know they are concerned about Bitcoin and they dont fit Bitcoin mining in their green agenda.
They cant stop mining, they can only try to ban it like China did, but look what happened with that, many miners migrated to other countries.
Making global bitcoin ban is possible to happen but I think chances are low, so they can only attack from inside.

If an entity is trying to perform an attack with no financial incentive then they would more likely use their own "unknown" pool, the fact that the largest pools are public pools suggests that only said pools can perform the attack, and thus, they would need a financial incentive.

There are other type of incentives, not just financial.
Someone can have incentive to eliminate things that mess with their plans.

No Govt has unlimited funds to attack bitcoin, maybe it was possible many years ago, but no longer possible.
Bitcoin is too large, and too well spread out around the world.

I wouldn't say this is impossible to happen, and Bitcoin have some weak points.
They literally have money printing machine, and they can bring entire financial system down that is much larger than bitcoin.

[kano]

But that has nothing to do with hashrate distribution between pools unless you think that the government is using public mining pools and even worse, spreading their hashrate between more than one pool, your concern is valid but not related to the subject, you are talking about 2 pools having 56% of the total hashrate, those two pools need to work together, run the same code and plan for the same attack, so this brings us back to the original "assumption", what does Bitmain get from screwing with BTC when everything Bitmain related depends on BTC?

I don't know exactly what governments are doing but I know they are concerned about Bitcoin and they dont fit Bitcoin mining in their green agenda.
They cant stop mining, they can only try to ban it like China did, but look what happened with that, many miners migrated to other countries.
Making global bitcoin ban is possible to happen but I think chances are low, so they can only attack from inside.

Govt's have been trying for almost 14 years, nothing new there.
As you also pointed out, the biggest example of that had very little effect on Bitcoin, the miners just moved elsewhere.

A global ban that could stop bitcoin is impossible.

Aside: there is already a country that accepts it as legal tender.

If an entity is trying to perform an attack with no financial incentive then they would more likely use their own "unknown" pool, the fact that the largest pools are public pools suggests that only said pools can perform the attack, and thus, they would need a financial incentive.

There are other type of incentives, not just financial.
Someone can have incentive to eliminate things that mess with their plans.

Well I gave details about what messing can be done and you seem to have ignored them.
The details clearly say it wont happen.

No Govt has unlimited funds to attack bitcoin, maybe it was possible many years ago, but no longer possible.
Bitcoin is too large, and too well spread out around the world.

I wouldn't say this is impossible to happen, and Bitcoin have some weak points.
They literally have money printing machine, and they can bring entire financial system down that is much larger than bitcoin.

You claim 'weak points' that can be exploited.
What are they?

What I've listed, that clearly isn't possible, you've ignored.

[notblox1]

A global ban that could stop bitcoin is impossible.

Aside: there is already a country that accepts it as legal tender.

They made global ban for many things so they can do it for Bitcoin if they want, but I hope they wont.
If it happens everything will still exist with mining but it would be more underground.
I dont think Bitcoin can function globally if mining would only happen in El Salvador 

You claim 'weak points' that can be exploited.
What are they?

You think Bitcoin is perfect and have no weak points?
If someone would turn off internet globally that would seriously affect Bitcoin, and everything else yes, but that is weak point

[kano]

...

You claim 'weak points' that can be exploited.
What are they?

You think Bitcoin is perfect and have no weak points?

No - I never said that - I gave two examples - did you read what I said at all?
I simply pointed out two that in reality would not be exploited.

If someone would turn off internet globally that would seriously affect Bitcoin, and everything else yes, but that is weak point

Which falls under what I said at the start ...

"could" is just another version of "no one would do this, but lets pretend it's possible, so I can write something people will think is interesting"

[notblox1]

No - I never said that - I gave two examples - did you read what I said at all?
I simply pointed out two that in reality would not be exploited.

Yes I did read what you wrote, but you didnt make any example of weak points that can be exploited in reality.
You wrote about fork and secret purchase of big amount of miners, but you say this is not going to happen.
After that I came to conclusion that Bitcoin have no exploitable weak points for you.

Which falls under what I said at the start ...

I really dont understand some of your interpretations, but you can have your opinion and I am glad we talked about this.

Going back to standard mode of tracking bitcoin mining pools, new report coming in May but I already saw two big pools going below 50% again, maybe some big miners are reading this topic  

[notblox1]

Month of May is here and its time for one more report on the state of bitcoin mining pools.
We can see that transaction fees have gone significantly higher recently and we had top most transactions ever recorded on Bitcoin blockchain.
I am not happy to see that two pools again have more than 52% together and that is Foundry USA in first place with 27.67% and Antpool with slightly over 25% of total hashrate.
F2Fpool is in third place with much less hashrate with around 11%, followed by Binance pool in fourth place that have around 11% of total hashrate.
ViaBTC is fifth biggest mining pool with 5.66% hashrate and all other mining pools are much less in size.
Five biggest pools have almost 85% of total Bitcoin hashrate and smaller recorded pool is PEGA Pool with 0.63% hashrate.


https://mempool.space/graphs/mining/pools

Cointelegraph just released new article about this topic named Bitcoin hash rates threaten blockchain decentralization:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-hash-rates-threaten-blockchain-decentralization

[notblox1]

It is time for another overview of Bitcoin mining pools as we entered moth on July.
I am not very happy to see that two biggest pools are still having over 51% of hashrate but it is on edge right now with 51.1%.
FoundryUSA is biggest pool with 29.2% hashrate and they are followed with second place AntPool that has 21.9% of total hashare.
Thee is a big difference with third place ViaBTC that have slightly more than 10% of hasharate, similar like Binance pool on fourth place.
F2pool have almost 9% hashrate on fifth place, and rest of the pools are significantly smaller, with some new small pools showing up this time.


https://mempool.space/graphs/mining/pools

[mikeywith]

It is time for another overview of Bitcoin mining pools as we entered moth on July.
I am not very happy to see that two biggest pools are still having over 51% of hashrate but it is on edge right now with 51.1%.
FoundryUSA is biggest pool with 29.2% hashrate and they are followed with second place AntPool that has 21.9% of total hashare.
Thee is a big difference with third place ViaBTC that have slightly more than 10% of hasharate, similar like Binance pool on fourth place.
F2pool have almost 9% hashrate on fifth place, and rest of the pools are significantly smaller, with some new small pools showing up this time.


https://mempool.space/graphs/mining/pools

Might as well add the 10% of Viabtc to Antpool and that would give you over 60% controlled by two entities (Foundry and Bitmian), while Haipo Yang tries his best to deny the fact his pool isn't indirectly owned by Bitmain, his attempts just keep failing, judging by the who is the largest investor in Viabtc, and the team that founded Viabtc, you can clearly see that it's just another branch for Bitmain.

Although, as I mentioned before, this isn't new, and there is nothing to worry about, 2-3 entities owning over 50% of the hashrate has been the norm for many years, and will always be the case.