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 multiple threads 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 a 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.

[FP91G]

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.

How much does it cost to develop and maintain a pool like Mara’s? Pools usually make money by attracting other miners, yet this company doesn't want to open its pool to others, do they not need the money?

[stompix]

How much does it cost to develop and maintain a pool like Mara’s? Pools usually make money by attracting other miners, yet this company doesn't want to open its pool to others, do they not need the money?

Mara Pool exists because Mara doesn't want a pool operator in control of their hash!
How would you pull shit like this otherwise?
https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000010c05038d08c742d28a7a248e9d0f94ebe5102f366c8e?audit=false
They also don't open their pool to others because they don't want to deal with an open network and customers that come with problems also not just money!
Nobody guarantees people would be mining with them at all, you're in charge of payments, you need to pay guys to keep the pool serviceable, for some companies and an extra 1% on top of what they make, assuming magically some other 5% of the hashrate moves to their pool magically, might be too much of a headache.

Foundry exists because it was an alliance of big miners based in the US that thought the same, they wanted their own pool, as you can see they are not that eager to open up to every guy with 10 ASICs because it's too much work for too little reward.

What looks like a ton of cash for some is a rounding error in SEC filings for others.

[Patikno]

As far as I know, the more Bitcoin miners there are, the more secure the Bitcoin network will be. So, I don't think anyone will be bothered by that.

Are you hoping for fewer miners ? I think that is a misconception, as it would put the Bitcoin network at risk, and you should know that lowering the diff won't help if there are fewer miners. It will affect Bitcoin as a whole, Cmiiw.

[ABCbits]

As far as I know, the more Bitcoin miners there are, the more secure the Bitcoin network will be. So, I don't think anyone will be bothered by that.

Are you hoping for fewer miners ? I think that is a misconception, as it would put the Bitcoin network at risk, and you should know that lowering the diff won't help if there are fewer miners. It will affect Bitcoin as a whole, Cmiiw.

Please re-read what OP said. OP mentioned 3 mining pools found 64% blocks in past week, which usually bring concern of mining centralization. OP didn't mention anything about growth of hashrate over time either.

[FP91G]

How much does it cost to develop and maintain a pool like Mara’s? Pools usually make money by attracting other miners, yet this company doesn't want to open its pool to others, do they not need the money?

Mara Pool exists because Mara doesn't want a pool operator in control of their hash!
How would you pull shit like this otherwise?
https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000010c05038d08c742d28a7a248e9d0f94ebe5102f366c8e?audit=false
They also don't open their pool to others because they don't want to deal with an open network and customers that come with problems also not just money!
Nobody guarantees people would be mining with them at all, you're in charge of payments, you need to pay guys to keep the pool serviceable, for some companies and an extra 1% on top of what they make, assuming magically some other 5% of the hashrate moves to their pool magically, might be too much of a headache.

Foundry exists because it was an alliance of big miners based in the US that thought the same, they wanted their own pool, as you can see they are not that eager to open up to every guy with 10 ASICs because it's too much work for too little reward.

What looks like a ton of cash for some is a rounding error in SEC filings for others.

I liked your example, but they didn’t do anything wrong; they simply included specific transactions in a block so that, when visualized, they would form an image of the president.

I know that not all American miners choose American mining pools, and this is not an issue when it comes to tax reporting.

[Mia Chloe]

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?

Well the there top pool are pretty much of a competition to each other so it doesn't really bring much of a reason to be bothered actually. Where there could be some issues is if one of the big three alone is already producing over 50% of the total hash rates and that's very unlikely.

At the end of the day all the pools are actually chasing getting as big of a profit as possible and the part about visualising trump in the mempool isn't actually a big of a deal though.

[FP91G]

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?

Well the there top pool are pretty much of a competition to each other so it doesn't really bring much of a reason to be bothered actually. Where there could be some issues is if one of the big three alone is already producing over 50% of the total hash rates and that's very unlikely.

At the end of the day all the pools are actually chasing getting as big of a profit as possible and the part about visualising trump in the mempool isn't actually a big of a deal though.

I don’t think a single pool should hold more than 50% of the hashrate, doing so would ultimately harm its own business.
Stability is crucial for a pool, and sharp fluctuations in hashrate would prompt miners to switch to other pools, as a way to demonstrate the decentralized nature of the system. If a single pool comes to hold more than 50%, the value of Bitcoin will fall.

[Mia Chloe]

I don’t think a single pool should hold more than 50% of the hashrate, doing so would ultimately harm its own business.
Stability is crucial for a pool, and sharp fluctuations in hashrate would prompt miners to switch to other pools, as a way to demonstrate the decentralized nature of the system. If a single pool comes to hold more than 50%, the value of Bitcoin will fall.

Trust me this dynamics is not even certain. I understand the 51% rule and it's relationship with chain reorg which actually is one of the major reasons everyone says it's not ideal for a single pool to generate that much of the total hashrate. I agree with you, however the probability that pools will do that is kinda thin in my opinion.

No pool wants to be an "evil pool" if it inherently means they'll lose money. Basically they are all after profit and infact if the had the power via 51% rule they'll focus on making more profit not wasting hashrate to be "evil".

[ABCbits]

If a single pool comes to hold more than 50%, the value of Bitcoin will fall.

Looking at how GHash mining pool used to have more than 50% hashrate back in early 2014, at least it would cause some panic and give opportunity to create some FUD. That pool no longer exist, but it's interesting they had plan to limit their own hashrate percentage below 40%.

In the meantime, we have temporary ways to mitigate the risk of a 51% attack, such as GHash's agreement to "do all it can to limit its share of the total bitcoin network to 39.99%."