Do the big bitcoin mining pools feel too big already?

[kaankaya]

was checking mempool.space and noticed the top 3 pools found around 64% of btc blocks over the last week. foundry is around 26%, antpool 20% and f2pool 18%.

so pool share isn’t the same as actually owning all that hashrate. miners can switch pools, and it’s not like 3 companies control 64% of the machines.

still tho... seeing that much block production going through just 3 pools feels pretty concentrated. maybe it’s totally fine as long as miners can move easily. but where the line is between “big pools are just efficient” and “this is getting a bit too centralized”.

would 60%+ in the top 3 bother you at all, or not really?

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Old topic that has been heavily discussed in the past.
Actually, MARA and Foundry are mainly private farms that do own most of their hardware. Antpool and f2pool both own a lot of hardware but at least have a lot of public miners as well.

It's been this way for many many years with no issues. From public pool mining or solo mining point of view it makes no difference as the odds of your miner being the one that finds a block remains the same regardless of who actually owns the rest of the global hash rate.

[Charles-Tim]

would 60%+ in the top 3 bother you at all, or not really?

You have answered this yourself. This is your answer:

so pool share isn’t the same as actually owning all that hashrate. miners can switch pools, and it’s not like 3 companies control 64% of the machines.

So if a mining pool go rogue, the miners will leave the pool for good.

Another thing is that a single mining pool to have 51% of the hashrates is different from 3 mining pools to have more than 51% of the hashrates.

[philipma1957]

consistency is what matters. also
Pool   ........................................................         Payout Method....Fee................... Network Share
Foundry USA   Large-scale US-based operations.   FPPS   ..........Tiered (private).         ~24%
AntPool.....   Bitmain hardware users   ........FPPS / PPLNS....   2.5% / 0%........   ~21%
F2Pool......   Mature operators.......   FPPS / PPLNS............   4% / 2%...........   ~16%
ViaBTC........   Payout flexibility.............   PPS+ / PPLNS / SOLO   ........4% / 2%........   ~9%
SpiderPool.........Mid-size operations......   FPPS   ..................................4%...........   ~7%
MARA Pool   Public mining companies.....   FPPS   ..............................Private........   ~6%
Luxor           North American professionals   FPPS   ~2% (custom tiers)......................   ~3.5%
Braiins Pool   Stratum V2 adopters   ................FPPS / PPLNS   2.5% / 0%.....................   <2%
Binance Pool   Exchange-integrated miners   FPPS   0.5%   ~2%
Ocean   Decentralization-focused   TIDES   2% (1% with DATUM)   ~2%
NiceHash   Marketplace flexibility   PPS+   ~2%   Marketplace


this is a list of 11 best pools taken from below

https://www.simplemining.io/insights/post/best-bitcoin-mining-pools

miners have other solo pools and these pools will shift in status.

this issue of pools to large is not a big deal at the moment.

the bolded pools will screen you if you want to join them.

when hashrate was about 1/3 of todays rate I asked to join foundry they said I had to have 20ph

so I would guess you now need 50 or 60ph to join them.

I never ask mara about joining but I think they are more restricted then foundry.

[ABCbits]

Old topic that has been heavily discussed in the past.

At this point, it's more than old. Using OP measurement, top 3 pool always have at least 40% combined estimated hash rate.

The dominating pool have changed a lot since 2013, but the overall distribution doesn't change that much.

[FP91G]

was checking mempool.space and noticed the top 3 pools found around 64% of btc blocks over the last week. foundry is around 26%, antpool 20% and f2pool 18%.

so pool share isn’t the same as actually owning all that hashrate. miners can switch pools, and it’s not like 3 companies control 64% of the machines.

still tho... seeing that much block production going through just 3 pools feels pretty concentrated. maybe it’s totally fine as long as miners can move easily. but where the line is between “big pools are just efficient” and “this is getting a bit too centralized”.

would 60%+ in the top 3 bother you at all, or not really?

And what exactly worries you? If pools start censoring transactions, they will lose their business. A pool's earnings depend on miners, and any change in rules or worsening of conditions for miners would instantly cause the pool to lose the support of its loyal clients. Nowadays, thousands of ASICs can be reconfigured to other pools in less than an hour.

[stompix]

would 60%+ in the top 3 bother you at all, or not really?

How do you know it's only 60%?
Maybe there is one miner with 90% of the hashrate, and he simply has a few of his miners mining here and a few mining there?
Oh, the hashrate is from different companies; how do you know they aren't actually owned by a single person?

This has been discussed ad nauseam, there is no solution to have 8 billion individual KYC'd miners and there is no way to prevent any build-up as long as you keep mining permissionless. Oh, you can go luke style retareded and do that, but we're talking real solutions here.

I never ask mara about joining but I think they are more restricted then foundry.

Mara is completely sealed off, only mining with their own gear, Foundry still has a bracket you can join, especially since you're a US citzen.
I don't know how many miners Foundry has, but they usually do 120-150 outputs as payments, and I've seen things as low as 0.01 that is $800 a week, which is pretty low; $100 a day is 3PH/s.