Bitcoin mining faces growing suspicions that can be translated with a single question: what if the apparent diversity of mining pools is just a facade, and there are a few entities that coordinate them all from the shadows? On this there are no concrete evidence, but circumstantial evidence and solid arguments in favor of the idea, which will be explored in this article.
As Cryptonotics reported, Bitcoin transactions templates proposed by the world’s largest pools are practically identical to each other. This similarity can be observed in real time through Stratum.work.
The analysis published by cryptootics on February 28, 2025 details how the transaction templates, which the miners send through pools such as Poolin, Binance, Luxor, Cloverpool and Ultimus, reflect a significant similarity.
The mining pools that operate under the incentive model known as FPPS (full payment for fee) tend to prioritize transactions that maximize their income, leaving little room for individual miners to influence the composition of the blocks. For some commentators in the Bitcoin ecosystem, this can be a problem.
The FPPS model moves the risk of not finding a block to Pool operators, who, to guarantee their profitability, centralize decisions about which transactions to include. As a result, the miners, who receive a fixed payment for their computational work, have few incentives or real decision power to worry about the diversity of transactions, which leads to homogeneity in the templates that are sent to the network.
Although the similarity between the templates can serve as a reasonable evidence that there is a coordinating entity of all the great pools, there is a simpler and less dramatic explanation of the phenomenon. All the great mining pools follow the logic of the maximum removable value (MEV); therefore, All transaction templates prioritize transactions with more profitable rates, which are approximately the same.
However, a recent finding, shared by User @Boerst in the social network X on April 3, 2025, reinforces the suspicions of a coordinating entity behind all pools.
In its publication, @Boerst analyzed data from the Stratum protocol, used by the Pools to communicate with the miners, and discovered an error that simultaneously affected several supposedly independent pools, such as Antpool, Binance Pool, Cloverpool and Rawpool (the latter identified as a Whitepool proxy).
According to the analysis, a few weeks ago, these Pools faced problems with their Stratum V1 works server and, during a period of 33 blocks, All sent approximately five templates per second.
This synchronous behavior is, in the words of @boets, «incredibly unlikely» if the pools were really independent. The coincidence suggests that, behind their different names, these pools could be operating as a single entity or share a common infrastructure, which would point to a higher centralization than is perceived with the naked eye.
Rob Warren, the book author «The Bitcoin Miner’s Almanac”Deepen the analysis of the @BoEST templates and designate a proper name for the entity that is supposedly behind the scenes, controlling or excessively coordinating the selection of bitcoin transactions. Warren mentions To Antpool, instead of A Foundry, the most important mining pool in the world.
While Foundry may seem like the fat fish in the world of Bitcoin mining, antpool can actually function as the backend of apparently different pools.
Rob Warren, the author of the book «The Bitcoin Miner’s Almanac”.
Warren says that similarities can be observed in pool payments, block size, transactions, distribution time and even errors in the code to identify the real source of a template, and not only in the op_return attribution in the coinbase transaction, which has the following format: “Mined by Foundry USA ». This is the method that, Warren assumes, uses Mempool.Space to determine what pools the templates come.
The author of the book with technical knowledge about Bitcoin deepens more on the roads that can be used to discover similar organization patterns in the choice of transactions, which point to Antpool. «For example, if you can find templates with the same organization, arrival times and even technical errors, you can start painting an image of a network where Antpool substantially controls more hash than it seems,» said Rob Warren.
Although the Bitcoin chain protocol analyst the correct method to know what is happening in the Mempool beyond the coinbase attribution, it does not clearly clarify How conclusion that Antpool could be the entity exercising a secret domain could be About Bitcoin mining. It does not name, then, specific pools that are supposedly under the influence of antpool.
The question is then open: if antpool is functioning as the backend From other pools, what are these pools and why?
What is safe, however, is that today there is an alternative form, related to the methods described by Warren, to evaluate the origin and data of a template beyond coinbase. His name is Miningpool.Observer, and was created by @Boerst, who raised the discussion and promoted the subsequent reflections of Warren.
Mining Pool Observer uses the following methodology:
Compare a recent block template with a freshly mined block. For an ideal comparison, a simultaneously built template is needed with the mining pool block. Since this is not possible without the active capture of data from different mining pools (for example, capturing Stratum’s works), the template creation time is assumed.
Mining Pool Observer, mining block explorer.
Another developer believes that Bitcoin mining pools are a masquerade
Luke Dashjr, developer of Bitcoin Core and CTO of Ocean Pool, has been one of the most forceful critics of this dynamic and one of the bitcoiners that maintains that there is no independence between the great mining pools.
In an exclusive interview with cryptootics, published on March 28, 2025, Dashjr said that many mining pools are not as independent as they appear. In their words, these pools operate as «pools with masks», a metaphor that uses to describe how these entities would be showing externally something that is not inside, hiding.
Dashjr was particularly emphatic when explaining the coincidence in the transaction templates: «The templates are only the same when they are not different pools.» With this statement, the developer suggests that Uniformity in the templates is proof that pools do not operate independentlybut they are coordinated or directly.
In addition, Dashjr added a direct criticism to the infrastructure behind these pools: «They are putting different names on the same servers.» For the developer, this undercover centralization is a serious problem, since it undermines one of the fundamental principles of Bitcoin: the autonomy of the participants in the network.
The hypothesis of a centralization and undercover interests between Bitcoin mining entities is not new. Before 2021, Bitmain was the owner of Antpool, A pool that, together with Foundry USA, controlled more than half of the global hashrate. Today, Antpool has about 17% of the global hashrate, according to hashrate index data, and Bitmain is the dominant manufacturer of the Asics market, quite a distance from the second. This is demonstrated by this list of the most profitable mining teams for mine Bitcoin.
In December 2020, Viaabtc did business with a Bitmain subsidiarycalled Antsetry, as demonstrated in this blog.
The combination of these elements – the uniformity of the transaction templates, Dashjr’s criticism over the «pools with masks», the finding of @Boet about synchronized errors – draws a shadow of concern in Bitcoin mining, although the final and conclusive evidence is missing.
However, confronted with this situation for the reasons mentioned in this article or by others that threaten Bitcoin’s decentralization, new pools have got to work.
This is the case of Ocean Pool, which has been in the market for longer and has undermined more than 200 blocks, and DMND (phonetically, «demand»), a mining protocol that Stratum V2 uses, an infrastructure that allows the negotiation of work by the miners and, consequently, a greater power of these to decide on transactions and their inclusion in the blocks.