Major Bitcoin Mining Pools and Firms Unite Behind Stratum v2 Protocol

Breaking News: Industry Giants Join Stratum v2 Working Group

Seven prominent Bitcoin mining entities — ANTPOOL, Block Inc, F2Pool, Foundry, Spiderpool, MARA Foundation, and DMND — have officially joined the Stratum v2 Working Group, the organization announced today.

The move marks a critical milestone in the push to upgrade the foundational mining protocol, which has remained largely unchanged for nearly a decade.

This mass adoption signals a rapidly solidifying industry consensus that Stratum v2 is the future of Bitcoin mining infrastructure.

What Is Stratum v2?

The Stratum v2 protocol is a major upgrade to the original Stratum mining protocol, delivering massive improvements in efficiency, privacy, security, and decentralization.

It enables end-to-end encryption, more efficient management of large mining fleets, and — crucially — allows individual miners to construct their own block templates when connected to supporting pools.

These features directly address long-standing centralization concerns in Bitcoin's mining ecosystem.

Industry Reaction

"We’re proud to support the broader adoption of Stratum V2. Aligning around an open, interoperable standard enables the industry to collaborate more effectively and drive improvements in efficiency, security and decentralization," said Andy Zhou, CEO of ANTPOOL.

Kenway Wang, CTO of Spiderpool, added: "Decentralization is core to our mission. Stratum V2 supports this by enabling miner-constructed templates, while also improving efficiency, especially for miners in bandwidth-constrained environments."

The working group says these new members represent substantial players across the mining ecosystem, from pool operators to hardware manufacturers and mining firms.

Background: The Working Group

The Stratum v2 Working Group was founded in 2022 by Braiins (formerly Slush Pool) and Spiral (Block's Bitcoin-focused division) to develop and maintain the protocol as an open, vendor-neutral specification.

Until now, the group primarily comprised its founders and a handful of early adopters. The onboarding of these seven major firms marks a decisive leap forward for the group's mission.

The group maintains a public specification and provides a coordination layer between developers and industry stakeholders to ensure real-world compatibility at scale.

What This Means

With ANTPOOL, F2Pool, Foundry, and Spiderpool — four of the world's largest mining pools — now on board, Stratum v2 is poised to move from experimental to mainstream deployment.

The addition of Block Inc, MARA Foundation, and DMND also brings critical weight from the broader Bitcoin financial and infrastructure sectors.

Analysts say this almost guarantees that Stratum v2 will become the de facto standard for Bitcoin mining within the next 12 to 18 months, replacing the outdated and insecure original Stratum protocol.

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