<p>There's a group of us working on a new iteration of <a href="http://p2pool.info/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">p2pool</a> based on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62Y_BW5NC1M" rel="nofollow noreferrer">braids</a> (a DAG-chain) and <a href="https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-August/014893.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">mining into payment (Lightning) channels</a>.  Like p2pool, each miner would construct his own block, and provide commitments/proof that payouts from the share-chain will be made to the appropriate Lightning channels (probably using "channel factories").  Braids solve incentive problems due to latency, and payment channels allow for small payments to a large number of miners without having those payouts compete for block space. p2pool is all but dead for a number of unfortunate reasons...among them is that it actually punishes latency more harshly than the underlying blockchain, and a widespread (incorrect) perception that people were making less money on p2pool.</p>

<p>To answer your question, yes it's most definitely possible to get rid of centralized mining pools, but there's lots of work to be done.  Such a pool could in principle execute the selfish mining strategy for pool members if it had enough hashpower (without reducing the security of the chain).  This would cause centralized pools to be less profitable than the decentralized pool, and economically encourage everyone to join the decentralized pool.</p>

<p>There's also a concept of <a href="https://bitcointalk.to/index.php?topic=221164.0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">pooled-solo mining</a> which as far as I know has never been implemented, though the idea is from 2013.  </p>

<p>Join us on irc.freenode.net in the channel #braidpool if you're interested in working on this.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-04-28T19:13:13.643Z
2018-04-28T19:21:33.553Z
2018-04-28T19:21:33.553Z
Bob McElrath
<p>Ethereum is ASIC resistant. 2x gain of ASIC vs GPU in my opinion is still beeing ASIC resistant. An algorithm that has the same performance with ASICs, GPUs and FPGAs is the perfect algorithm because it gives miners freedom of choise for their hardware. A combination with the right balance between PoW and PoS could lead to an almost perfect decentralization. Pure solutions like PoW only or PoS only are bad because "PoW only" leads to mining and pools centralization while "PoS only" is not secured mathematically, it's like buying magic the gathering's cards. Decred has both PoW and PoS but it's not ASIC resistant so in my opinion this project missed the point.
Bitcoin never fought this battle this is way I think that sooner or later it will perish while other projects are frenetically looking for a robust solution.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-09T10:15:00.963Z
2019-01-09T15:12:24.267Z
2019-01-09T15:12:24.267Z
Viktor Joras
<p>There are some criticism that PoW of bitcoin and ethereum protocol suffers from the centralization of mining pools, and dPos such as EOS claimed to be more decentralized in practice than bitcoin and ethereum even it only has 21 block producers.</p>

<p>My question is, is there any possibility to get rid of large mining pools centralization? Ethereum tried to make the hashing algorithms ASIC hard, but it seems that it doesn't do any better.</p>

<mining-pools><mining-theory><decentralization><asic-resistance>
Is it possible to get rid of mining pools and therefore get a truly decentralized bitcoin?
an offer can't refuse
# Is it possible to get rid of mining pools and therefore get a truly decentralized bitcoin?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-04-28)

There are some criticism that PoW of bitcoin and ethereum protocol suffers from the centralization of mining pools, and dPos such as EOS claimed to be more decentralized in practice than bitcoin and ethereum even it only has 21 block producers.

My question is, is there any possibility to get rid of large mining pools centralization? Ethereum tried to make the hashing algorithms ASIC hard, but it seems that it doesn't do any better.

**Tags:** mining-pools, mining-theory, decentralization, asic-resistance


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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2018-04-28. Score: 2

There's a group of us working on a new iteration of [p2pool](http://p2pool.info/) based on [braids](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62Y_BW5NC1M) (a DAG-chain) and [mining into payment (Lightning) channels](https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-August/014893.html). Like p2pool, each miner would construct his own block, and provide commitments/proof that payouts from the share-chain will be made to the appropriate Lightning channels (probably using "channel factories"). Braids solve incentive problems due to latency, and payment channels allow for small payments to a large number of miners without having those payouts compete for block space. p2pool is all but dead for a number of unfortunate reasons...among them is that it actually punishes latency more harshly than the underlying blockchain, and a widespread (incorrect) perception that people were making less money on p2pool.

To answer your question, yes it's most definitely possible to get rid of centralized mining pools, but there's lots of work to be done. Such a pool could in principle execute the selfish mining strategy for pool members if it had enough hashpower (without reducing the security of the chain). This would cause centralized pools to be less profitable than the decentralized pool, and economically encourage everyone to join the decentralized pool.

There's also a concept of [pooled-solo mining](https://bitcointalk.to/index.php?topic=221164.0) which as far as I know has never been implemented, though the idea is from 2013.

Join us on irc.freenode.net in the channel #braidpool if you're interested in working on this.


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### Answer by username_2 on 2019-01-09. Score: 0

Ethereum is ASIC resistant. 2x gain of ASIC vs GPU in my opinion is still beeing ASIC resistant. An algorithm that has the same performance with ASICs, GPUs and FPGAs is the perfect algorithm because it gives miners freedom of choise for their hardware. A combination with the right balance between PoW and PoS could lead to an almost perfect decentralization. Pure solutions like PoW only or PoS only are bad because "PoW only" leads to mining and pools centralization while "PoS only" is not secured mathematically, it's like buying magic the gathering's cards. Decred has both PoW and PoS but it's not ASIC resistant so in my opinion this project missed the point.
Bitcoin never fought this battle this is way I think that sooner or later it will perish while other projects are frenetically looking for a robust solution.


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