Bitcoin (BTC) is commonly praised by its supporters as essentially the most decentralized cryptocurrency, however the reality could also be one thing else. In response to Onchain knowledge, there are solely two Bitcoin mining swimming pools which have mined greater than 51% of BTC prior to now three years. There’s a cause why it is necessary and might elevate centralized alerts for main blockchain networks.
Finbold has obtained this data mempool.house,Bitcoin knowledge aggregator and block explorer have been collected immediately from the observer node. Primarily, this knowledge ranks the Bitcoin mining pool for every mined block for the overall block mined over a specific interval.
Over the previous three years beginning March 28, 2025, Bitcoin mining blocks have been very dominated by two mining swimming pools.
To be exact, Foundry USA issued 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 over the previous three years.
Why is it vital that there are solely two mining swimming pools above the 51% threshold?
In response to a white paper written by Nakamoto At, Bitcoin’s worth proposition lies in reaching consensus on the blockchain state in a decentralized means. That is achieved through Bitcoin mining if a particular node (miner) makes use of computational energy to crack the hash of encryption to find blocks.
As soon as a block is found, the miners earn the best to gather Coinbase, a newly created BTC unit. Along with Coinbase, miners can even add transactions to blocks to gather their respective charges.
To do that, miners should broadcast found blocks in each Coinbase transactions and in all third-party transactions. Different nodes designed by Satoshi observe an extended chain. Which means that it provides a series with extra calibration work put in, or extra blocks.
There’s a theoretical assault referred to as a 51% offensive, and in principle, a nasty actor can spend double. Moreover, Bitcoin mining swimming pools might censor transactions as they’re deliberately broadcasted if they’ve adequate management over mined blocks.
Finbold reported that F2Pool, the third largest Bitcoin mining pool, was arrested and later acquired a acknowledged transaction.
In its present state, the Bitcoin community has two Nakamoto coefficients. The Nakamoto coefficient is a metric that measures the decentralization of a blockchain community by figuring out the minimal variety of unbiased entities (akin to miners) required to manage or destroy the community.
Bitcoin mining pool, not particular person miners or nodes
Every pool is probably going product of a special miner, however it’s a pool coordinator, a single entity, which units up blocks, broadcasts them to the community, collects rewards and distributes them to miners as wanted.
Due to this fact, mining swimming pools are associated entities in measuring present blockchain consensus distributed state. It will possibly solely be migrated as soon as if it is too late beneath a digital assault, not particular person miners or nodes.
We’ve additionally seen circumstances the place transaction charges haven’t been distributed to Antpur miners, however are despatched again to the sender, as anticipated.
Moreover, Antpur was additionally the protagonist of one other discovery by a widely known pseudonym analyst. B10C. Researchers say the information recommend that the second largest mining pool might have a powerful influence on the opposite 5 Bitcoin mining swimming pools.
Trying on the Merkle department that mining swimming pools ship to miners as a part of tier jobs, it’s clear that BTCCOM swimming pools, binance swimming pools, swimming pools, EMCD, Rawpools, and in some circumstances Brainins* 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 could possibly be suppressed as an financial system of scale dynamics has emerged and has elevated the benefit of enormous miners. The extra blocks a mining pool is found, the extra rewards will probably be collected from newly issued BTC and buying and selling charges. It will enable for better funding in infrastructure, simpler entry to capital, and additional benefits over future block mining.
Featured photographs from ShutterStock.
