b10c

Bitcoin Mining Centralization in 2025 This post explores Bitcoin Mining Centralization in 2025 by looking at the hashrate share of the current five biggest mining pools. It presents a Mining Centralization Index and updates it with the as...

In the current Bitcoin mining landscape with proxy pools like AntPool & friends, 6 mining pools produce and mine more than 95% of the block templates.

Bitcoin mining is highly centralized today.

b10c.me/blog/015-bit...

new @OrangeSurfBTC tool https://orange.surf/grid/

https://grid.orange.surf/?metric=miners&minerGroups=AntPool+%26+friends%3Ared%3AAntPool%2CBTC.com%2CBinance+Pool%2CWhitePool%2CSECPOOL%2CLuxor%7COther%3Agreen%3ASBI+Crypto%2COCEAN%2CMARA+Pool%2CF2Pool%2CFoundry+USA%2CViaBTC&ref=b10c.me

Invalid mining jobs by AntPool & friends during forks Looking deeper into @boerst’s recent observation about invalid mining jobs by AntPool & friends to discuss his hypothesis about “selfish mining” and “glitchy template code”. I conclude that it’s proba...

This (x.com/boerst/statu...) post by boerst inspired me to dig into the invalid "AntPool & friends" mining jobs a bit deeper. Findings:

- happens during forks
- likely bug in AntPool coinbase building
- probably not selfish mining
- proxy pools affected too

b10c.me/observations...

Vulnerability Disclosure: Wasting ViaBTC's 60 EH/s hashrate by sending a P2P message In January, while investigating a misbehaving client on the Bitcoin P2P network, I found a vulnerability in ViaBTC’s, the fourth largest Bitcoin mining pool, SPV mining code that allowed a remote atta...

Reposting this fun disclosure from last year here:

b10c.me/blog/012-via...

👀@mempool

cc @mononautical @OrangeSurfBTC

.@mempool the accelerated transaction https://mempool.space/tx/1e3674b914e20c8ac2c62d3537c1c2c4f45c5ce07ad2beeae2c1877b8a538abc shows 8.33 s/vB in the block-audit but only 3.40 s/vB on the transaction page.

Based on the position in the block 8.33 s/vB should be correct. Based on the accelerated...

testnet4 (aka forknet4) right now

https://fork.observer/?network=4

@mempool's block audit also expected the transactions and considers it as excluded due to "marginal fee rate" too

here's an RSS feed for anyone interested https://miningpool.observer/template-and-block/sanctioned-feed.xml

miningpool-observer alerting about a "Sanctioned Transaction missing from Block" on @f2pool_offical's block 875575.

I think it was reasonable for F2Pool not to include it as they knew about transactions paying a higher fee - but I'll keep an eye on it

https://miningpool.observer/template-and-bl...

fyi @mempool this address shows a negative balance for me

node210 fra (v3.1.0-dev) [01df22ef][17255d15]

https://mempool.space/address/3JP3zF7LoeoAotqkNGdvX5szUyNPwd937d

cc @wantclue @skot9000

Someone working on something like this?

Context: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/31117

testnet4 looks more like forknet4 right now

hm @FoundryServices ?

context

https://x.com/0xB10C/status/1780611768081121700

I had another look at similarities between mining pool block template by comparing the Merkle branches in the mining jobs. This confirms suspicion about proxy pools and raises the question if some pools are directly peering with each other.

https://b10c.me/observations/12-template-similarity/

really like this image from the chapter on open-source development of @kallerosenbaum's Bitcoin development philosophy

https://bitcoindevphilosophy.com/#opensource

During the fork at height 853051 between Foundry and Binance Pool, Foundry mined on their own block and won.

The first version 3 Bitcoin transaction😉

https://mempool.space/tx/110da331fd5336038316c4709404aea5855afed21f054f5bba01bfef099d5da1

No drop in inbound connections to my Bitcoin P2P monitoring nodes since the start of the #cloudstrike incident.

(matches my assumption that most nodes probably don't run on Windows servers with cloudstrike installed)

also as blog post with a few recent examples

https://b10c.me/blog/014-mining-pool-game-theory-during-forks/

https://b10c.me/blog/014-mining-pool-game-theory-during-forks/

mining pool game theory during forks

Todays fork between Foundry (winning) and AntPool again shows that AntPool (& friends/proxies) isn't mining on their own block during a fork.

AntPool first send an empty job mining on their own block but then switched to Foundry's block and found a block on it.

My data might not show the full picture here as it shows ViaBTC only mining on AntPool's block. This is possibly due to ViaBTC running multiple stratum servers (e.g. "VIP" servers for high-hashrate miners) distributing different jobs.

Another fork between AntPool (loosing) and Foundry (winning). While my data shows that all pools besides Foundry mined on AntPool's block, ViaBTC found a block on Foundry's block.

Also, we see forks now almost every other day now..