delvingbitcoin
PPLNS with job declaration
Posted on: September 6, 2024 00:54 UTC
The StratumV2 Reference Implementation (SRI) is a key contributor to the evolving landscape of Bitcoin mining, particularly in addressing concerns around mining centralization.
This effort targets the domination of the Bitmain FPPS debt-slavery cartel, which poses significant risks to the decentralization of Bitcoin mining. The paper titled "PPLNS with Job Declaration" offers academically sound solutions and sheds light on innovative ideas proposed by Demand Pool's team, aimed at navigating Bitcoin out of its current precarious situation.
A pivotal aspect of the SRI is its support for hashers to select their own templates via Job Declaration (JD), although it remains neutral regarding share accounting and reward distribution mechanisms. This neutrality presents a challenge for mining pools in designing systems that either rely on the blind trust of hashers or provide feedback to reduce the necessity of such trust. Opting for the latter requires protocol extensions, underscoring the protocol's flexibility in accommodating various operational models within mining pools.
The SV2 protocol, enhanced through JD, democratizes the mining process by allowing hashers to be compensated for working on potentially less economically viable templates. Various factors can influence a template's economic viability, including geographical disadvantages, ideological motivations, and strategic transaction selection based on meta-protocols or attempts to protect low-end nodes. This approach necessitates a fair compensation mechanism that acknowledges the value of jobs completed with less profitable templates, ensuring equitable reward distribution among hashers.
The introduction of a new SV2 protocol extension, grounded in the PPLNS system rather than the FPPS model, signifies a significant advancement in fairer mining practices. This development is part of an ongoing dialogue among Braiins, Demand, and SRI engineers, as documented in this Discussion on SRI repo. The discussion is centered on refining the implementation details of this inaugural SV2 protocol extension, marking a critical step forward in the evolution of Bitcoin mining technology.