Tether partners with OCEAN mining pool to decentralize Bitcoin block-building

2 months ago

Stablecoin issuer Tether has announced it intends to deploy its existing and aboriginal Bitcoin hashrate to OCEAN’s Bitcoin mining excavation successful an effort to fortify the network’s decentralization.

“Deploying hashrate to OCEAN aligns with some our mining investments and our broader ngo to fortify Bitcoin against centralizing forces,” Tether’s CEO Paolo Ardoino said successful an April 15 statement.

While Bitcoin hashrate is decentralized, the block-building process conducted by mining pools is mostly centralized by a fewer ascendant actors — astir notably Foundry USA, AntPool and ViaBTC.

The OCEAN protocol attempts to decentralize this process by empowering miners to physique their ain artifact templates utilizing their open-source DATUM protocol, reducing dependency connected centralized intermediaries and enhancing censorship resistance, Tether said.

Tether’s deployment would leverage OCEAN’s DATUM bundle crossed each of its mining operations worldwide, including successful agrarian areas successful Africa.

“By enabling on-site procreation of unsocial artifact templates and aggregating thousands of rig connections with low-latency performance, DATUM ensures planetary competitiveness portion promoting geographic and operational diversity,” Tether said.

Tether presently deploys Bitcoin hashrate astatine sites successful Uruguay, Paraguay and El Salvador, wherever the $144 cardinal stablecoin issuer is besides headquartered.

Those initiatives emerged astir the clip Tether announced it would put $500 cardinal into Bitcoin mining successful precocious 2023.

OCEAN was created by Bitcoin halfway developer Luke Dashjr successful 2023 and has been backed by the likes of Block CEO Jack Dorsey. OCEAN besides relocated its headquarters to El Salvador successful May 2024.

Dashjr sparked contention successful December 2023 erstwhile helium slammed Bitcoin Ordinals users for clogging the web with “spam.” However, he refuted claims that OCEAN censored the non-fungible token-like transactions.

OCEAN inactive has a batch of marketplace stock to capture

The OCEAN protocol presently mines betwixt 0.2% to 1% of Bitcoin blocks, according to mempool.space data.

It has mined 9 blocks implicit the past week, including 2 successful a enactment astatine 892342 and 892343 connected April 14.

However, OCEAN’s output remains a fraction of that seen by Foundry USA, AntPool and ViaBTC, which person mined 331, 199 and 161 Bitcoin blocks, respectively, implicit the aforesaid timeframe — accounting for implicit 66% of each blocks.

The Tether concern would apt supply a much-needed boost to OCEAN’s hashrate, which has amounted to 18.3 exahashes per 2nd (EH/s) implicit the past 24 hours.

By comparison, Foundry USA’s hashrate implicit the aforesaid timeframe has exceeded 298 EH/s, leveraging hashrate from the likes of Bitcoin mining firms Hut 8, Bitdeer and Bitfarms.

Magazine: Financial nihilism successful crypto is implicit — It’s clip to imagination large again

View source