Bitcoin Mining Pool distribution monthly reports

With more delay than usual I am posting state of bitcoin pools in month of March.
FoundryUSA is back in the first place with biggest hashrate of 31.91%, and Antpool is below them in second place with 27.66%.
ViaBTC pool jumped up in third place with 12.77% and they switched placed with F2Pool that is now in fourth place with only 7% hashrate.
Three pools Binance, Mara and Unknown have the same 3.55% hasharate, than we are going down with much smaller pools.
Bitcoin reached new ATH and miners are having biggest profits in history.

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

Month of April arrived and this is time for another look at the state of bitcoin mining pools.
There was some news that miners are moving from United States to other countries in last few weeks, but FoundryUSA is holding fine and sharing the first place with AntPool.
Both of them have 29.14% of total hashrate, that is over 58% hashrate for only two pools.
F2Pool is in third place with significantly lower number of nearly 12% hashrate, followed by ViaBTC with 10.6% hashrate.
Now we are heading to much smaller pools with Braiins and Binance pools having 3.31% and other pools have less.
I am expecting to see big changes in next month report, but lets wait and see.

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

Around April 20, the halving will cut the amount of Bitcoin that "miners" can earn each day for validating transactions to 450 from 900 now. Based on Bitcoin's current price, it could spell revenue losses of around $10 billion a year for the industry as a whole. Marathon Digital Holdings, CleanSpark, and other miners, which compete for a fixed Bitcoin reward by solving mathematical puzzles using superfast computers, have invested in new equipment and sought to buy smaller rivals in an attempt to cushion the drop-off in revenue.

Read more at:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com//markets/cryptocurrency/bitcoin-halving-could-deal-a-10-billion-blow-to-crypto-miners/articleshow/109297461.cms?

Month of May is here and it is time for another look at the state of bitcoin mining pools after Bitcoin halving was finished.
Antpool remains in the first place with 24.44% of hashrate but there was few percent decrease from last month.
Foundry USA pool is second largest pool with almost 23% of hashrate and they also record drop in hashrate from last month.
F2Pool is now in third place with over 15% of hashrate, with increase from April, followed by ViaBTC pool that has around 11% hashrate.
After them we have more smaller pools with BTC.com being the biggest.
It is good that two pools dont have over 51% hashrate anymore, but it could be better pool distribution.

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

A single custodian now controls the coinbase addresses of at least 9 pools, representing 47% of total hashrate.

As demonstrated by this consolidation of mining reward outputs from AntPool, F2Pool, Binance Pool, Braiins, btccom, SECPOOL and Poolin:
https://mempool.space/tx/b1dc9e09a97d0ac8ed57179c276dff19d484c1f74b96cd9af547107af4f18086
https://twitter.com/mononautical/status/1777686545715089605

Month of June and summer is here, that is a good time for another overview of bitcoin mining pools.
Antpool remains biggest mining pool for a second month in a row with almost 28% of the hashrate, and it is followed by FoundryUSA pool with 25.87%.
ViaBTC has taken over third place with 9.79% of hashrate and F2Pool slipped one place below them with 8.39%, that is big drop for them from last month.
Mara Pool have shown biggest increase so far and they have 7.79% hashrate, with all other pools having less than 5% hashrate.
Binance pool is holding on 2.8% and I think wont exist for much longer now when CZ is in prison, but lets wait and see what happens.

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

July is here and during summer time we can see changes in bitcoin mining pools.
Foundry USA is bac on top as bigegst mining pool with over 33% hashrate, that is a big jump from last month.
Antpool remained similar share last last month but now it fall down to seconds place with 28.35% hashrate.
ViaBTC remained in third place with 11% and small increase in hashrate, followed by F2 pool with same 11% hashrate.
Mara pool is fifth place with less than 5% hashrate that is small decrease from last month.
Rest of the pools are much smaller and Binance pool is almost dead with only 0.79% hashrate.

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

Once am done with my training, I will definitely join bitcoin mining pool because am trying to get quality tools that will make me smart in that pool.

Quote from: Oshio-man on July 19, 2024, 11:24:07 AM

Once am done with my training, I will definitely join bitcoin mining pool because am trying to get quality tools that will make me smart in that pool.

There is no being "smart" in bitcoin mining, well, you can be smart but it would not help you in anyway, share or form, mining is all about hashrate, the higher your hashrate the more the pool would you, there are indeed some KYC-based mining pools -- but an IQ test is not required, I would love to understand how do you think that being "smart" matters when you are mining bitcoin?

Month of August is here and it is time to check the state of mining pools.
FoundryUSA is in the first place with biggest pool of 32.47% hashrate but AntPool is not far behind in second place with almost 28% hashrate.
This two pools have combined almost 60% of the total hashrate, and ViaBTC is following them in third place with 15.69% that is increase from last month.
F2Pool is fourth pool with 9% of hashrate that is slight decline from last month, and after them is Mara pool with 4.9%.
All other pools are smaller in size and Binance pool now only has 0.7% hashrate with small decrease from previous month.

September is already here and we are checking the state of bitcoin mining pools again.
FoundryUSA reamins in the first place with 36.43% and biggest hashrate, they made a big difference compared to AntPool in second place with 21.43% hashrate.
ViaBTC remained in third place like last month with similar 13.57% of hashrate, and after them is F2Pool in fourth place with 8.57% hashrate, similar like in Ausgust.
Mara pool is fifth biggest pool like last month, this time with 4.29% hashrate, followed by many other smaller pools.
Current hasharate from all miners is 619.36 EH/s.

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

China still controls 55% of Bitcoin hashrate despite crypto ban

Chinese Bitcoin miners still control the lion’s share of the global network despite the country’s ban on cryptocurrencies.

Over 55% of the Bitcoin mining network is still controlled by Chinese mining pools, according to Ki Young Ju, founder and CEO of CryptoQuant.

However, Bitcoin mining dominance is slowly shifting to US mining firms. Ju wrote in a Sept. 23 X post:

“Chinese mining pools operate 55% of the network, while U.S. pools manage 40%. U.S. pools primarily cater to institutional miners in America, while Chinese pools support relatively smaller miners in Asia.”

This is not good for the Bitcoin network at all. And if the transaction is ignored just because the entries come from sources of dubious provenance.

Quote from: notblox1 on September 01, 2024, 09:48:54 PM

September is already here and we are checking the state of bitcoin mining pools again.
https://mempool.space/graphs/mining/pools

This time series chart from https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/pools-timeseries is more helpful.

You can choose different periods like 7D, 1M, 3M, 6M, 1Y, 3Y and see changes and distributions of Bitcoin mining hashrate in different pools. Under the chart, there is a helpful table of Summary of Mined Blocks.

My instincts tell me that 2 pools controlling 50+% of the hash is not good. But I don't know enough about the network to know exactly why it is not good.
Can someone explain to me what the potential downsides are, if any, of the hashrate being so consolidated?

Quote from: floridaman86 on September 29, 2024, 06:33:12 PM

Theoretically those pools could collide to perform 51% attack if their hashrate being consolidated. But such attack isn't hard to detect, where they risk their reputation and long term income. Although they could get away through less obvious attack such as block withholding attack (also called selfish mining) or intentionally exclude certain transaction in small amount. This blog post talks about pool which exclude certain transaction, https://b10c.me/observations/08-missing-sanctioned-transactions/.

It is time for another monthly check of bitcoin mining pools as we entered the month of October.
There was significant drop in hashrate for Foundry USA and now they have almost the same hashrate as AntPool in second place with 27% hahsrate.
ViaBTC remained in third place and they have similar hashrate like previous month, followed by F2Pool in fourth place with 11.63% hashrate.
Mara pool is again in fifth place with 4.43% hashrate and Binance pool has now fallen to only 2.66% hashrate.

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

I found interesting research for mining pools that is showing we have much more centralization in bitcoin mining than we think:
https://b10c.me/observations/12-template-similarity/

Quote from: OcTradism on September 25, 2024, 08:14:10 AM

This time series chart from https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/pools-timeseries is more helpful.

Thanks.

We are in final stages of year 2024 and we just entered the month of November, that is perfect time to check the state of bitcoin mining pools.
FoundryUSA is strongly holding the first place with over 27% of hashrate, that is very similar like in previous month.
In second place we have ANdPoll with almost 20% hashrate, that is significant drop from last month.
F2Pool is now in third place with 13.66% but ViaBTC is not far behind them with almost 12% hashrate.
In fifth place we have newcomer SpiderPool with almost 5% hashrate, and SECPOOL and Mara pool have similar stats.
Binance pool is inking lower, now they have only 1.24% hashrate, and soon they might shut down their operation.

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

Last month of year 2024 is here and it is time for another Bitcoin mining pool report.
FoundryUSA remains in first place with over 34% hashrate that is increase from previous report, and AntPool is again in second place with 17.5% hashrate.
Let me just say that this two biggest pools Foundry USA and AndPool together have almost 52% of total hashrate, and they are KYC-ONLY pools, that makes is even more problematic.
ViaBTC is back in third place with 13% and slight increase from last report, followed by F2Pool that has fallen to fourth place with almost 11% hashrate.
SECPOOL made a hashrate jump and they are now fifth biggest bitcoin pool with 7.3% hashrate, followed by MARA Pool with 5-84% hashrate.
Rest of the pools are all below 5% hashrate but Binance showed signs of life and now they have arond 3-65% hashrate.

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

We entered new year today so it is time to make final observation for year 2024 and month of December.
FoundryUSA hugely increased their percentage of hashrate with 43.61% hashrate, that is almost 10% increase from last month.
ViaBTC is now in second place with similar share like in previous month, and we saw huge drop for AntPool that is now in third place with only 11.28% of ahshrate.
F2Pool in following in 4th place with 8.27% hashrate, and after them we see MARA Pool, SpiderPool and other smaller pools, with Binance pool having only 1.5% hahsrate.
One year time period is showing FoundryUSA as biggest pool with almost 30% hashrate, Antpool is in second place with 24% and ViaBTC in third place with 13.22% hahsrate.

Some bitcoin mining pools are sanctioning more transactions and one of the pool doing this is F2Pool.
There is one website following this: https://miningpool.observer/

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