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...
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...
b10c.me
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...
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...
b10c.me
Reposting this fun disclosure from last year here: b10c.me/blog/012-via...
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...
b10c.me
.@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...
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
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)
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.
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..
Another fork between @AntPoolofficial (losing) and @FoundryServices (winning). While AntPool and friends started off mining an empty block on AntPool's block, they switched to Foundry's block with the next (non-empty) mining job.
During today's fork between ViaBTC (losing) and AntPool (winning), AntPool & a few other pools briefly mined empty blocks on AntPools block before switching to ViaBTCs. Foundry ended up mining a block on AntPool's block causing AntPool, despite giving up on it's block, to win.
* in the second image, it should have been height 848860 and not 848861
During today's fork at height 848477 between AntPool and Foundry, all pools besides Foundry mined on AntPool's block. While Foundry briefly mined on AntPool's block, they then switched to their own block and won against all other pools.
Earlier today, @FoundryServices mined two blocks at height 847849. Six out of 10 of my nodes saw the loosing block first.
P2P connections and messages between my node and its peers in realtime
Earlier today, AntPool and Foundry both found a block at height 845869. Foundry's block was found a few seconds after AntPool's. All pools, including Foundry, continued mining on AntPool's block.
