The adoption of Stratum V2, which would be an improvement on the current protocol miners use to connect with pools, is being promoted by a group of Bitcoin firms, including Spiral and Braiins.
On Tuesday, they will also release an open-source version of that protocol that may be tested right away. The update from Stratum V1 would enhance network security for both miners and the network as well, enhance communication, and assist in further decentralising the network.
“Miners understand the benefits of upgrading to Stratum V2, but getting the entire mining business through some of the remaining development & acceptance barriers is a major effort,” said Jan Capek, co-founder of Braiins.
According to a joint statement from Braiins & Spiral, the upgrade is essential to “enable continued growth in hashrate” as well as an increase in pooled mining.
The effort to see it comes at a time when mining difficulty has risen by 13.55% to an all-time high.
According to a Galaxy report from August, “Stratum V1’s weak documentation has resulted in multiple interpretations & implementations, leading to mistakes & complexity.” In a different post from February, the company outlined the advantages of Stratum V2 for the network.
One of the most significant breakthroughs in enhancing the decentralisation & censorship resistance of Bitcoin’s architecture, according to Steve Lee, lead at Spiral, is working to have the improved Stratum protocol adopted by the whole industry.
According to the joint statement, the open-source Stratum V2 reference implementation (SRI) would allow anyone to run the improved protocol or “use it to drive their own creation of a separate compatible implementation for Stratum V2.”
Beginning in early November, there will be a “more comprehensive version of the same SRI” that “supports extra features.”
According to the statement, “this group will also make sure that all Stratum V2 projects can interface with one another based on the protocol standards.”
