Troubling new Bitcoin analysis into Bitmain mining proxies

In April, pseudonymous researchers Mononaut and 0xB10C confirmed a long-held suspicion that Bitmain influenced a regarding share of the bitcoin mining community. In the present day, follow-up analysis confirms the sway of Bitmain over ‘proxy’ mining swimming pools.

Though bitcoin miners are technically capable of change mining swimming pools as they want, this analysis reveals that as a sensible matter, lots of them not often if ever change away from Bitmain-led work templates.

An in depth follow-up evaluation utilized a weighted similarity rating of transaction ordering and block templates throughout 37% of Bitcoin’s hashrate. The evaluation revealed that many supposedly impartial mining swimming pools are principally passing alongside Bitmain-templated work to their miners.

Learn extra: New analysis suggests Bitcoin mining centralized round Bitmain

Particularly, Poolin and BTC.com are 99% and 98% just like the Bitmain-operated AntPool.

Though these three mining swimming pools are essentially the most comparable, there are much more proxy-like relationships with others. Blocks produced by pool operators Ultimus, Braiins, Binance, and Spider even have over 80% correlation to this Bitmain-led trio.

It has by no means been a secret that Bitmain manufactured the world’s overwhelming, bodily majority of bitcoin mining machines. Nevertheless, its lesser-known position within the day-to-day operations of bitcoin mining swimming pools is now below scrutiny because of unique analysis by 0xB10C.

The continued analysis collection by 0xB10C and Mononaut is cautious to deny that the similarity of labor throughout swimming pools and miners accepting block templates from Bitmain entities doesn’t essentially point out that Bitmain controls their work.

Certainly, miners typically settle for Bitmain defaults and block templates out of comfort — not as a result of they’re succumbing to an express directive.

0xB10C operates Bitcoin community monitoring instruments like miningpool-observer and peer-observer, and fork-observer. The researcher can also be a long-term recipient of a philanthropic grant from OpenSats.

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