This article discusses the increasing transparency and accessibility of monitoring mining pools' communications with their miners. Historically, miners relied on pools to send them instructions, but with the rise of Stratum V2, miners may soon craft their own blocks, reducing reliance on pools. However, until that happens, we can observe what pools are "whispering" to their miners.
The article highlights a key development in April 2024 when @0xB10C drew attention to the issue of pool centralization, focusing on the Merkle tree data pools broadcast to miners. This data can show patterns, and b10c's work identified certain pools with similar Merkle trees, suggesting connections or proxy pools.
In 2025, Boerst noticed pools sending empty blocks, a strange behavior that raised concerns, especially when multiple large pools were doing it simultaneously. This pointed to potential issues in the mining pool space.
To investigate such behaviors, new accessible tools are now available:
Stratum.work – Developed by Boerst, this tool dynamically tracks mining pools. Mempool.space/stratum – Another useful resource, although difficult to navigate to, which also visualizes pool connections. The article encourages miners and others to use these tools to monitor pool behavior and call out suspicious actions, helping keep pools accountable.
This article discusses the increasing transparency and accessibility of monitoring mining pools' communications with their miners. Historically, miners relied on pools to send them instructions, but with the rise of Stratum V2, miners may soon craft their own blocks, reducing reliance on pools. However, until that happens, we can observe what pools are "whispering" to their miners.
The article highlights a key development in April 2024 when @0xB10C drew attention to the issue of pool centralization, focusing on the Merkle tree data pools broadcast to miners. This data can show patterns, and b10c's work identified certain pools with similar Merkle trees, suggesting connections or proxy pools.
In 2025, Boerst noticed pools sending empty blocks, a strange behavior that raised concerns, especially when multiple large pools were doing it simultaneously. This pointed to potential issues in the mining pool space.
To investigate such behaviors, new accessible tools are now available:
Stratum.work – Developed by Boerst, this tool dynamically tracks mining pools.
Mempool.space/stratum – Another useful resource, although difficult to navigate to, which also visualizes pool connections.
The article encourages miners and others to use these tools to monitor pool behavior and call out suspicious actions, helping keep pools accountable.