Did Bitcoin mining change forever yesterday 🤔
Hey @OceanSlim l, @npub1lh273a4wpkup00stw8dzqjvvrqrfdrv2v3v4t8pynuezlfe5vjnsnaa9nk, and @npub1wnlu28xrq9gv77dkevck6ws4euej4v568rlvn66gf2c428tdrptqq3n3wr, I watched the announcement yesterday but came away with a lot of unanswered questions that I'll detail below. I would legitimately love to hear the answers to these if at all possible!
How is Ocean non-custodial for the average miner?
On the stream it was mentioned that payout thresholds are 0.0108 BTC (but @Bitcoin Mechanic was unsure), a number that would take a pleb miner with an S9 ~470d to reach.
Until he reaches that payout point, all of his mined sats seem to be entirely custodied by Ocean.
How does Ocean decentralize mining today?
I was so excited by the teases and pre-announcements for Ocean as it sounded like exactly what I wanted in a Bitcoin pool. Unfortunately, it sounds like all of the decentralization possible is yet to be release, including StratumV2 and any ability for miners to submit block templates themselves.
Did I miss anything that makes Ocean more decentralized than other pools today?
Why is Ocean not open source?
If Ocean is as revolutionary and decentralizing as it's being made out to be, wouldn't the best thing for Bitcoin be that all pools switch over time to the same mode?
If so, why isn't Ocean open-sourcing any of it's protocol or code? In the announcement it seemed that @Bitcoin Mechanic was bragging that no competitor would be able to "reproduce" their lead dev's code, thus keeping their competitive edge.
There was no mention to my knowledge of open source, but it's possible I missed it!
What guarantee do miners have that you won't censor transactions?
As miners cannot submit their own block templates right now and the source is not open code, miners have to rely on manually checking a visual block template on your site to find censorship.
@Luke Dashjr has a history of censoring what he viewed as "spam," and there was a lot of time spent in the conference talking about how bad Ordinals are and how bad pools are that mine them.
What guarantees or promises do miners have that you won't censor transactions you don't like?
How will Ocean handle regulatory pressure to enact KYC?
In the event that regulators of the Feds come knocking and want you to implement KYC (as seems to be the case with other pools), what will you do?
What will Ocean's fee model be after the 0% period?
There was a lot of talk about how most pools subsidize larger miners and charge exhorbitant fees to smaller miners during the conference. One thing that wasn't ever mentioned was what Ocean's fee policy will be after the 2mo 0% fee period.
Could you explain how the fee model will work?
Conclusion
That's enough questions for now, I think, but I look forward to getting answers to these! We have a desperate need for decentralized mining in Bitcoin and a massive gap today.
I look forward to hearing back 🙂
How it's going:
DISCLAIMER: Obviously I work for Foundation, a competitor to COLDCARD, but the views I lay out here were already true before joining Foundation.
I would be just as happy if this led to zero sales of Passport but got the truth out there.
Freedom and integrity matter.
For background, COLDCARD was started as a free and open-source project that forked some of Trezor's code base way back in the day, and inherited the copy-left GPL licensing from Trezor:
MIT-CC is an interesting license on its own right, and isn't evil or anything, but it is certainly not within the realm of open-source in any way.
It is a clear departure from the definition of open-source that is globally recognized:
In the image above, NVK attacks an open-source contributor (who also works at Foundation) for using his free time to help the Monero community with forking Foundation code and creating something they want from it.
AKA the entire purpose of FOSS being mocked and insulted.
Why does open-source matter?
When a project is open-source, it means that not only do they share a freedom-focused ethos with you, but it also incentivizes other developers and companies in the space to build on their work.
More eyes on the code and devs building around a codebase means more secure code, a better and flourishing ecosystem, and far better verification that the code actually does what it's supposed to do.
It also means that if the company producing the software goes under, someone can jump in and pick up where they left off.
If Foundation had to shut down for some reason, any one of you could start a new HWW company from our code and open-source schematics and we'd applaud.
Open-source also means that companies are forced to compete by prioritizing users needs, not building products locked behind laws or lawyers that don't have to keep up with the times.
More competition in a free market means you, the customer, wins.
When code is *not* open-source, it means that there is no core incentive for others outside of the company building the product to review the code, build around it, or contribute to it.
As no one could ever create something they can sell with it, why build around it?
When code is *not* open-source, it also means that the contribution made, even though technically visible, can never help to grow the broader ecosystem and benefit the whole of the Bitcoin space.
It builds monopolies, not free markets.
Bitcoin is about freedom, and Satoshi's decision to use permissive open-source licenses was intentional and fitting with his attempts to build an open and inclusive monetary network.
Open-source is the reason Bitcoin has flourished and so many amazing tools have been built.
While everyone within Bitcoin is free to choose the licenses they want for their projects, if they choose source-verifiable or closed-source they must be up front and honest about it, and users must understand the massive tradeoffs involved.
The information in this thread is all readily visible and I've linked to it all directly, so please feel free to do your own research and confirm my claims independently.
You absolutely should DYOR in situations like this.
Please note that @NVK has not replied to any of the claims made here and has instead chosen to block me, so I am unable to interact with any of his tweets.
I have no doubt he's subtweeting about this but be aware I have no way to respond to him or his personal attacks now.
Since sharing this on Twitter he has so far called me a "spook", a "white knight", a "FOSS commie", a "bitch", and a "grifter" in the span of 12h all while blocking me.
TIL FOSS is just "commie zealotry" 🙃
