•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Antpool, F2pool, Foundry, Spiderpool, Block Inc., MARA Foundation, and DMND have joined the Stratum V2 Working Group to advance Stratum V2 as an open mining protocol standard, according to an announcement published on the group’s official site.
Stratum V2 is designed to replace Stratum V1, a push-based protocol released in 2012 by Marek “Slush” Palatinus. While Stratum V1 became the industry default, it was not built as a formal standard. The earlier approach left pools in full control of transaction selection, used plaintext communication, and exposed miners to hashrate hijacking and surveillance.
The newer protocol addresses these issues by using end-to-end authenticated encryption. It also reduces bandwidth usage by roughly 60% on the pool side and 70% for miners. Stratum V2 further introduces a Job Declaration sub-protocol that allows miners to build their own block templates rather than relying on templates assigned by pools.
The working group said keeping Stratum V2 as a public, vendor-neutral specification is intended to remove compatibility barriers and help the ecosystem focus on improving efficiency, privacy, security, and miner autonomy—“ultimately leading to increased profitability.”
Real-world tests from Braiins indicate miners can capture up to 7.4% higher profitability when running Stratum V2 natively. The reported drivers include faster template delivery, lower latency, and improved fee selection.
Antpool CEO Andy Zhou said the company is “proud to support the broader adoption of Stratum V2,” adding that aligning around an open, interoperable standard enables collaboration on efficiency, security, and decentralization.
Spiderpool CTO Kenway Wang noted that the protocol supports miner-constructed templates, which can be particularly useful for operators in bandwidth-constrained environments.
Braiins Pool and DMND are already running Stratum V2 in production. DMND launched in 2025 as one of the first pools to offer full miner-selected templates. Blitzpool runs Stratum V2 for solo miners, and the Stratum V2 Reference Implementation community pool continues testing.
The Stratum V2 Working Group was founded in 2022 by Braiins and Spiral, Block’s Bitcoin technology arm. The group has operated for more than four years as an independent open-source community and is now entering “a new phase of accelerated development and deployment” with the addition of large-scale operators.
Foundry, Luxor, and Antpool had each made prior testing commitments or prepared infrastructure before the announcement. The seven new additions represent tens of exahashes per second of combined hashrate. The figure is relevant because roughly five pools currently control about 70% of global hashpower and therefore most block content.
For individual bitcoin miners, the practical impact depends on when these pools enable Stratum V2 access for users. The announcement notes that translation proxies already allow Stratum V1 firmware to connect to V2 pools without requiring hardware or firmware upgrades, which is intended to reduce adoption barriers.
Premium gym chains are entering a “golden era” that is ending or already in decline, as rising operating costs collide with shifting consumer preferences toward more flexible, community-based ways to exercise. Long-term memberships are shrinking, margins are pressured by higher rents and facility expenses, and competition from smaller, more personalized…
