AARON: Ocean’s DATUM Is Tackling Bitcoin’s Most Pressing Problem

Credit : bitcoinmagazine.com

It’s troublesome to discover a extra basic menace to Bitcoin’s survival than the centralization of mining. If there are – say – only some mining swimming pools, there’s a very actual probability that these organizations will face regulatory pressures of the type that exchanges have additionally confronted: they might be pressured to solely settle for KYC transactions in report blocks. Since resistance to censorship is arguably the core worth proposition, I significantly doubt Bitcoin would have a lot long-term viability on this situation in any respect.

That is why it was nice to see Ocean launch DATE (Decentralized Various Templates for Common Mining) this weekend. Like Stratum V2 (applied by Demand Pool), DATUM permits miners (or: “hashers”) to pick the transactions they embrace within the blocks they discover, whereas nonetheless sharing the block reward with different customers of the pool. In different phrases, hashers get the advantage of pooled mining with out having to outsource transaction choice to the Ocean pool operators, making it more durable to use laws. (It’s a lot simpler to control a number of giant firms – mining swimming pools – in a handful of jurisdictions than it’s to control many smaller firms and people – hashers – from around the globe.)

After all, the hostile mindset will see that this in itself doesn’t resolve the issue of mining centralization in its entirety. The obvious is that draconian lawmakers may finally ban the sort of pooled mining altogether. Moreover, it is not likely clear that there is any demand in any respect from hashers to assemble their very own blocks – though that might after all change rapidly if and when there’s precise regulatory stress stopping swimming pools from together with sure transactions in blocks. (And Ocean is encouraging hashers to pick their very own transactions by reducing charges for many who use the brand new characteristic.)

Regardless, DATE is a vital step in the precise course. In any case, it could alleviate a number of the considerations of Ocean itself who refuses to incorporate sure “spam” transactions of their blocks: now every hasher can determine for himself which transactions he needs to incorporate and which not.

The more durable it’s to thwart Bitcoin’s censorship resistance, the brighter Bitcoin’s future seems.