NASHVILLE 2024

I've made the trek down to Bitcoin Park a number of times. It's about four and a half hours from where I live and it's not an unreasonable drive once a quarter for the incredible meetings they host down there. Other than that, I can't really justify the expenses, compounded with the time off, to go to most bigger bitcoin conferences. This past week, however, I had a steal of a deal to the Bitcoin Magazine conference, which also happened to be in Nashville. I would like to share with you all some thoughts as someone who is still fresh from their first experience meeting industrial miners.

Going into last week, I assumed that most industrial miners had at LEAST the same general knowledge as home miners like myself about concerns for mining pool centralization. Friday afternoon, as most folks had already left the convention floor, I was waiting for my daughters to use the restroom and noticed IREN's virtual reality headsets. Curious, I held one up to my eyes to see their virtual facilities tour. I've never used a VR headset, so I was quickly under the spell and about to put the strap on the back of my head. Fortunately, I was interrupted by a voice asking what I thought. The spell was broken, I pulled the headset away, and I saw a smiling face clearly poised and ready to field my questions.

I told him that it was "neat," which was honestly more to downplay the experience to myself than to him. In reality, the...virtual reality seemed more impressive than I wish it did. But I cut right to the point.

"What do you mine to?" "Bitcoin." "I mean, what pools do you mine to?" "50% Foundry and 50% to AntPool." "Why those two?" "I don't know." "What would you do in the event of a 51% attack?" "I don't know."

Now, you might be asking, "how much can you expect from an employee that's clearly there to impressive investors or something?" I would answer, quite a lot! This is the face that they're putting out at a conference specifically for bitcoiners. This wasn't a green energy conference. This wasn't a venture capital conference. But even if it was one of those places, this is one of the biggest concerns for his whole industry.

The premier platitude for 51% attack concerns is that if these pools go rogue, all of the miners will just switch. Well...yes...I will leave with my mighty 15TH/s fleet*. Maybe folks experimenting with the fun GekkoScience projects I saw will leave with their 200GH/s fleet. Maybe we'll even get lucky, and folks that bought the Superheat water heaters will leave with their 68TH/s fleet. However, the facility in that VR headset, with 2.5 EH/s, isn't even thinking about this issue! They have four other major sites like this.

While not a scientific study, I spent most of the day on Saturday asking other industrial miners similar questions. For the most part, I got similar responses. To their credit, most hosting companies said that they let their customers choose their pools. However, are those smaller miners more like me or more like IREN? I didn't get a chance to catch anyone at TeraWulf, which is using nuclear power to mine. However, if their response is also Foundry and no plan, that's ~10EH/s that's being contributed to the 51% danger.

I caught a pretty knowledgable employee from Syntona Friday evening and shared my concerns. He mentioned that this attitude doesn't even really line up with the financial incentives of the miners. I don't use Foundry and AntPool for reasons that are probably pretty obvious by this point in my rant, but he said they're also not the best for fees and FPPS and other reasons that started to fly over my head. He also mused that many of them would be better off solo mining anyway.

So...is there a group that specializes in industrial miner education? Am I imagining a consulting firm waiting to happen? I feel as if I'm identifying a problem with an easy solution, but maybe some stackers here can tell me what I'm missing. I'd love to get on board with anybody that is already trying to make this happen. I'm not so presumptuous as to think I'm the first person to notice this concern, but maybe it actually is just having a fresh ear to the ground where many of you have already walked.