Finding a more fundamental threat to Bitcoin’s survival than mining centralization is challenging. For instance, if there are merely a few mining pools, these entities could face regulatory pressures similar to those encountered by exchanges: they might be compelled to only include KYC-compliant transactions in their blocks. Given that censorship resistance is arguably Bitcoin’s essential value, I truly question whether Bitcoin could sustain long-term viability in such a scenario.
In that context, it was exciting to witness Ocean introduce DATUM (Decentralized Alternative Templates for Universal Mining) over the weekend. Much like Stratum V2 (executed by Demand Pool), DATUM empowers miners (or “hashers”) to choose the transactions they want to include in the blocks they uncover, while still distributing the block reward among other pool participants. This means that hashers can enjoy pooled mining benefits without relinquishing transaction selection to the Ocean pool operators, making it tougher to enforce regulations. (Regulating a few large entities— like mining pools— in select jurisdictions is far simpler than attempting to govern numerous smaller businesses and individuals —hashers— spread across the globe.)
However, the adversarial perspective will note that this doesn’t wholly resolve the issue of mining centralization. For example, stringent lawmakers could ultimately prohibit this type of pooled mining altogether. Additionally, it remains uncertain whether there’s a demand from hashers to build their own blocks in the first place— although this could swiftly change should regulatory pressures arise that prevent pools from including certain transactions in their blocks. (Moreover, Ocean is encouraging hashers to select their transactions by reducing fees for those who utilize the new feature.)
In any case, DATUM represents a significant advancement in the right direction. At the very least, it alleviates many concerns regarding Ocean potentially rejecting specific “spam” transactions in their blocks: now every hasher can independently determine which transactions they want to include or exclude.
The harder it is to undermine Bitcoin’s censorship resistance, the more promising Bitcoin’s future appears.
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