My current position on the Core debate:
If Bitcoin is accepted by the broader public, the mining market will become so competitive that it will mainly be viable with excess electricity or by reusing the heat from computers. These applications are distributed worldwide and are most efficient directly at the source where surplus energy or heat exists. Pools will continue to exist, but they will increasingly consist of participants located across many different regions. For Bitcoin’s decentralization it is essential that these different actors have the ability to construct their own blocks. Protocols such as Stratum V2 are important because they give individual miners the power to decide on block content rather than leaving this responsibility entirely to the pool operator, which otherwise strengthens centralization.
In my view, the new Core version continues to push Bitcoin in a centralized mining direction even though we already have tools that could make mining more decentralized. With this version, it becomes harder for individuals to mine because running Core alone is no longer enough. A miner also has to worry about which filters to activate in order to avoid legal risks if a block they find were to include illegal content. This raises the barrier for small participants. Until now the OP_RETURN limit has already made it almost impossible for illegal content to slip into a block without being split across multiple transactions. Instead of leaving this safeguard as it is, the new changes create additional complexity and discourage individual miners. The result is that large pools benefit while individuals lose part of their freedom to decide how to run their node, whether they want to mine or simply participate independently in the network.
I am aware that settings can still be adjusted, but it is a major pitfall if I want to use my node for mining. What I find troubling is the very assumption that a node is not by default meant to be used for mining and for securing Bitcoin’s decentralization.
#mining #core