Key Takeaways
Seven of the largest bitcoin mining pools formally joined the Stratum V2 Working Group on May 7, signaling a major industry shift toward miner-controlled transaction selection and greater network decentralization.
"We’re proud to support the broader adoption of Stratum V2," said Andy Zhou, CEO of ANTPOOL. "Aligning around an open, interoperable standard enables the industry to collaborate more effectively and drive improvements in efficiency, security and decentralization."
The new members include ANTPOOL, F2Pool, Foundry, Spiderpool, Block Inc., MARA Foundation, and DMND. The Stratum V2 protocol they are backing is a significant upgrade to the original Stratum, which gave pools full control over block templates. The new version uses end-to-end encryption, reduces bandwidth needs by up to 70 percent for miners, and, most importantly, allows miners to build their own blocks.
This shift directly addresses long-standing concerns about the concentration of power among a few large mining pools, which currently control roughly 70 percent of global hashrate. By empowering individual miners, Stratum V2 strengthens the Bitcoin network’s core value proposition of censorship resistance and could increase long-term investor confidence in its robustness.
The Stratum V2 Working Group was founded in 2022 by Braiins and Spiral to develop the protocol as an open-source, vendor-neutral standard. The addition of these seven large-scale operators marks a new phase of accelerated deployment for the initiative.
The protocol's benefits are not just ideological. Real-world tests by Braiins show miners can capture up to 7.4 percent higher profitability from lower latency, faster template delivery, and better transaction fee selection.
"Decentralization is core to our mission," said Kenway Wang, CTO of Spiderpool. "Stratum V2 supports this by enabling miner-constructed templates, while also improving efficiency, especially for miners in bandwidth-constrained environments."
While pools like Braiins Pool and DMND are already running Stratum V2, the addition of giants like Foundry and Antpool represents a critical mass of hashrate committing to the standard.
The transition for miners is expected to be gradual. Translation proxies are available that allow mining hardware running older Stratum V1 firmware to connect to V2 pools, lowering the barrier to entry and eliminating the need for immediate hardware or firmware upgrades. The next step depends on when these new member pools begin enabling V2 access for their users.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
