Bitcoin mining enters its most significant decentralization shift in years. The Stratum V2 working group announced that seven major mining pools—Foundry, AntPool, F2Pool, SpiderPool, MARA Pool, Block Inc., and DMND—have officially adopted the open-source protocol, collectively controlling nearly 75% of the total network hash rate. The core innovation of Stratum V2 lies in returning transaction selection rights from mining pool operators to individual miners, directly addressing the Bitcoin community’s long-standing concerns over mining centralization.
(Background: Cipher Mining and Fluidstack reach a $3 billion escrow agreement, with Google providing loan guarantees to buy 5.4% of CIFR stock)
(Additional context: Bitcoin mining company BIT Mining shifts to Solana: raises $300 million, fully assets to build SOL reserves, stock surges 154%)

A quiet but profound transfer of power has occurred within the Bitcoin mining ecosystem. Last week, the Stratum V2 working group announced that Foundry, AntPool, F2Pool, SpiderPool, MARA Pool, Block Inc., and DMND have officially joined the open-source protocol—these seven pools together control nearly 75% of the global Bitcoin hash rate, marking the largest step toward decentralization in recent years.

According to the latest data from Hashrate Index, Foundry alone accounts for 34.2% of the network hash rate, AntPool 14.2%, F2Pool 11.3%, SpiderPool 10.5%, and MARA Pool 4.7%. Just these five pools already hold over 74% of the hash rate share.

What has Stratum V2 changed? Not the hash rate, but “who calls the shots”

Under the current Stratum V1 protocol, almost every new block’s transaction selection rights are held by the mining pool operators, not the individual miners actually performing the computations. This centralization has been a core structural concern of the Bitcoin community over the past two years—especially when a single pool controls over 30% of the hash rate, the power to order transactions becomes a real risk.

Stratum V2 does not alter the distribution of hash power, but it changes who decides which transactions go into each block. Under this new protocol, individual miners can construct their own block templates, and the decision to include or exclude transactions is returned from pool operators to the miners themselves.

This is the part that the Bitcoin community truly cares about.

From niche project in 2022 to mainstream adoption by 2026

The Stratum V2 protocol was initially promoted by a working group jointly founded by Braiins and Spiral in 2022. Over the past four years, it has been regarded as a niche technical experiment with limited adoption. The inclusion of Foundry and AntPool has completely reversed the situation—this collective endorsement by the seven major pools positions the protocol’s deployment as “the start of a new accelerated phase.”

It’s worth noting that this protocol shift coincides precisely with mounting economic pressures in the mining industry. CoinShares estimates that currently 20% of miners are unprofitable, with hashprice (revenue per unit of hash rate) at just $38.57 per PH/s per day, barely breaking even for farms running mid-generation hardware.

Network difficulty continues to rise. Data from CoinWarz shows that on May 15, mining difficulty will increase again from 132.47T to 135.64T, and the total network hash rate has already reached 998 EH/s—miners, under economic tightening, are choosing protocols that grant more autonomy. This timing is no coincidence.

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