A critical component of this transition is the continued development and adoption of Stratum V2, an open-source effort jointly led by the SRI team and Bitcoin developers from around the world, which gives control of creating blocks back to individual miners instead of pools—and introduces much-needed security upgrades over the Stratum V1 protocol.

Demand’s SV2 Bitcoin Mining Pool

Following the launch of their solo mining pilot in late 2023, DMND has been hard at work contributing to the testing and building of the SRI, including exploring and pioneering their novel mining rewards payout system dubbed SLICE.

Though beyond the scope of this piece, at its core, SLICE combines the benefits of Pay Per Last N Share (PPLNS) and Stratum V2’s Job Declaration to create a system that maximizes miner payouts while eliminating hidden fees and avoids the economic incentives towards mining centralization we see with mining pools using the conventional Full Pay Per Share (FPPS) system.

By leveraging Stratum V2, DMND also benefits from end-to-end encryption, which safeguards against hashrate hijacking (where attackers usurp and redirect hashrate from miners), reduced hashrate waste, more efficient data transfer, and lower costs.

DMND also opened up and announced its application on its website for miners to join as launch partners today. Miners who apply to join the pool by March 28 will have 0% fees for the first two months and secure an exclusive two-year founding miner agreement.

A New Era for Bitcoin Mining

With the growing activity surrounding the development and adoption of Stratum V2, along with other related approaches like OCEAN’s Decentralized Alternative Templates for Universal Mining (DATUM), we have entered the initial phases of a renaissance in decentralizing global Bitcoin mining.

We are at a historically significant moment for Bitcoin, marked by ETF inflows, the U.S. government’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR), the use of Bitcoin mining for rural electrification in Africa, and similar developments. Thus, reinforcing Bitcoin’s core properties has never been this crucial to prevent it from becoming a failed project.

DMND’s Stratum V2 pool highlights that global stakeholders are committed to enhancing and protecting bitcoin, a $1.6 trillion asset, for current and future generations, ushering in a new era for Bitcoin mining.