Seven of the biggest names in Bitcoin mining have agreed to collaborate on overhauling the industry’s communication protocol. AntPool, Block Inc., F2Pool, Foundry, MARA Foundation, SpiderPool, and DMND have all joined the Stratum V2 working group.
The upgrade from the current Stratum V1 protocol, used since 2012, addresses several critical issues. V1 transmits data in plaintext, making it vulnerable to eavesdropping and manipulation. It also gives mining pool operators exclusive control over which transactions go into a block.
Stratum V2 introduces end-to-end encryption, improved fleet management, and a key feature: individual miners can now build their own block templates. The working group, founded in 2022 by Braiins and Block’s Spiral division, aims to create a vendor-neutral open standard.
Economically, the upgrade could boost miner profitability by up to 7.4% through reduced latency and better data handling, according to the project. The participating pools represent a substantial share of Bitcoin’s total hashrate. AntPool and F2Pool alone account for about 25-35% of global mining capacity. Add Foundry and MARA Foundation, and the group controls a meaningful portion of Bitcoin’s computational power.
For investors in publicly traded mining companies like Marathon Digital, the transition signals potential efficiency gains. In a business where margins hinge on a few percentage points, a 7.4% profitability improvement could be significant.