XBTJames on Nostr: GM - Sunday Morning Ocean Pool Thoughts On one hand, I am unbelievably supportive of ...
GM - Sunday Morning Ocean Pool Thoughts
On one hand, I am unbelievably supportive of Ocean Pool on the basis that if anyone in the space feels strongly about something, they should put their money where their mouth is and the team behind OP did exactly that. Talk is cheap, and it's easy to sit and complain. That being said, Ocean Pool faces a ton of uphill battles towards sustainability, and I am skeptical it will be in any way significant in a years' time.
Ocean Pool is almost by default destined to fail. Forget about differences in block templates, It's incredibly difficult to operate a pool right now, particularly a pool that is not FPPS payout. We have seen Braiins Pool, the last large PPLNS pool, slowly leak hashrate for almost 2 years now. Braiins Pool was all but forced to move to FPPS, because large corporate miners cannot justify the payout volatility of only getting paid when the pool finds a block. So Ocean, using a similar scheme starts at a disadvantage on sheer economic considerations. It is very difficult for a public mining company to justify taking that unneeded volatility on when it is so cheap to hedge luck risk with a FPPS payout pool.
With that out of the way, for anyone who can get over that hurdle of mining a scheme that depends on pool luck, Ocean is still asking miners, the vast majority of whom are economic actors, to forgo real fee income from Ordinal transactions. This is currently substantial, with the delta between block templates much higher than the 2% fee waive Ocean gives miners for mining alternatives to the standard Bitcoin Core template. This also drives a catch-22: If the difference in fees from including unwanted transactions and not is greater than 2%, the fees are likely substantial enough for miners care about. Miners who might agree philosophically with Ocean might still opt to mine the Bitcoin Core template to capture additional fee income. If the difference in templates drops below that 2% incentive level, surely miners will opt to save those fees BUT the activity in these unwanted transactions is probably not substantial enough to care about.
I wish the Ocean the best of luck and very much appreciate anyone in the space who actually steps up and does something about what they see as a 'problem', rather than complain on X. Still, I wouldn't point my hashrate there.
On one hand, I am unbelievably supportive of Ocean Pool on the basis that if anyone in the space feels strongly about something, they should put their money where their mouth is and the team behind OP did exactly that. Talk is cheap, and it's easy to sit and complain. That being said, Ocean Pool faces a ton of uphill battles towards sustainability, and I am skeptical it will be in any way significant in a years' time.
Ocean Pool is almost by default destined to fail. Forget about differences in block templates, It's incredibly difficult to operate a pool right now, particularly a pool that is not FPPS payout. We have seen Braiins Pool, the last large PPLNS pool, slowly leak hashrate for almost 2 years now. Braiins Pool was all but forced to move to FPPS, because large corporate miners cannot justify the payout volatility of only getting paid when the pool finds a block. So Ocean, using a similar scheme starts at a disadvantage on sheer economic considerations. It is very difficult for a public mining company to justify taking that unneeded volatility on when it is so cheap to hedge luck risk with a FPPS payout pool.
With that out of the way, for anyone who can get over that hurdle of mining a scheme that depends on pool luck, Ocean is still asking miners, the vast majority of whom are economic actors, to forgo real fee income from Ordinal transactions. This is currently substantial, with the delta between block templates much higher than the 2% fee waive Ocean gives miners for mining alternatives to the standard Bitcoin Core template. This also drives a catch-22: If the difference in fees from including unwanted transactions and not is greater than 2%, the fees are likely substantial enough for miners care about. Miners who might agree philosophically with Ocean might still opt to mine the Bitcoin Core template to capture additional fee income. If the difference in templates drops below that 2% incentive level, surely miners will opt to save those fees BUT the activity in these unwanted transactions is probably not substantial enough to care about.
I wish the Ocean the best of luck and very much appreciate anyone in the space who actually steps up and does something about what they see as a 'problem', rather than complain on X. Still, I wouldn't point my hashrate there.