Bitcoin (BTC) is usually praised as probably the most decentralized cryptocurrency by its supporters, however the reality might be one thing else. Onchain knowledge exhibits that solely two Bitcoin mining swimming pools mined over 51% of all BTC within the final three years. Right here is why it issues and will increase a centralization alert for the main blockchain community.
Finbold retrieved this info from mempool.house, a Bitcoin knowledge aggregator and block explorer, gathered straight from an observer node. Basically, this knowledge ranks Bitcoin mining swimming pools per their mined blocks towards the overall blocks mined in a sure interval.
Within the final three years from March 28, 2025, the Bitcoin mined blocks have been extremely dominated by two mining swimming pools.
Exactly, Foundry USA revealed 46,076 blocks (28.72%) and AntPool 34,365 blocks (21.42%), out of 160,432. Collectively, these mining swimming pools have mined 90,441 blocks, or 56.37% of the overall, within the final three years.
Why does it matter to have solely two mining swimming pools above the 51% threshold
In response to the whitepaper written by Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s worth proposition lies in reaching consensus over the blockchain state in a decentralized method. That is achieved by way of Bitcoin mining, when particular nodes (the miners) use computational energy to crack cryptographic hashes, discovering blocks.
As soon as the blocks are found, the miner positive aspects the correct to gather the coinbase, that are newly created BTC models. Moreover the coinbase, miners can even add transactions to the blocks, gathering their respective charges.
For that, the miner must broadcast the found block with each their coinbase transaction and all of the third-party transactions. Different nodes, as designed by Satoshi, will comply with the longer chain, which implies the chain with extra proof-o-work hooked up to it, or extra added blocks.
There’s a theoretical assault referred to as the 51% assault, which, theoretically, might permit a foul actor to make double spends. Furthermore, Bitcoin mining swimming pools might intentionally censor transactions from being broadcasted, in the event that they management sufficient of the mined blocks.
Finbold reported a case the place F2Pool, the third-largest Bitcoin mining pool, was caught – and later admitted – filtering transactions.
At its present state, the Bitcoin community has a Nakamoto Coefficient of two. The Nakamoto coefficient is a metric that measures the decentralization of a blockchain community by figuring out the minimal variety of impartial entities (like miners) wanted to manage or disrupt the community.
Bitcoin mining swimming pools and never particular person miners or nodes
Whereas every pool is supposedly made of various miners, it’s the pool coordinator, a single entity, accountable for setting the block, broadcasting it to the community, gathering the rewards, after which, if they need, distribute it to their miners.
Subsequently, the mining swimming pools are the related entities when measuring the present blockchain consensus decentralization state. Not the person miners or nodes, that may migrate solely as soon as it’s too late, underneath a hypothetical assault.
Now we have additionally seen circumstances the place transaction charges weren’t distributed to AntPool miners, as anticipated, however despatched again to the sender.
Moreover, AntPool was additionally the protagonist of one other discovery by the famend pseudonym analyst b10c. In response to the researcher, knowledge suggests the second-largest mining pool might have sturdy affect over 5 different Bitcoin mining swimming pools.
Wanting on the merkle branches that mining swimming pools ship to miners as a part of stratum jobs, it is clear that the BTCcom pool, Binance pool, Poolin, EMCD, Rawpool, and probably Braiins* have precisely the identical template and customized transaction prioritization as AntPool. https://t.co/KTjFWtTXEP pic.twitter.com/xhCrdvkOH8
— b10c (@0xB10C) April 17, 2024
In conclusion, Bitcoin decentralization might be in verify as economies of scale dynamics play out, growing huge miners’ dominance. The extra blocks a mining pool discovers, the extra rewards it collects from newly issued BTC and transaction charges. This permits for bigger investments in infrastructure, simpler entry to capital, and much more dominance over future block mining.
Featured picture from Shutterstock.
