Bitcoin (BTC) startup Mummolin has raised $6.2 million in seed funding led by Jack Dorsey to give miners control over their block rewards from the network.
The capital will support the launch of a decentralized mining pool – OCEAN. According to a statement, the new non-custodial pool will be the first of its kind as it will pay miners their block rewards directly and without interference from a central body, unlike some of the existing pools.
Longtime Bitcoin core developer and Mummolin co-founder Luke Dashjr said: “We are launching as the most transparent pool and also the only non-custodial pool where miners receive new block rewards directly from Bitcoin.”
In a Bitcoin mining pool, operators working to confirm transactions on the network come together to coordinate their efforts and then share the resulting rewards with miners.
The traditional Bitcoin mining pool can act as a centralized entity, allowing it to hold the rewards paid by the network and then distribute them to miners, Mummolin co-founder and president Mark Artymko said in the statement.
“This gives them the ability to withhold payments from individual miners, whether at their discretion or due to legal requirements,” he added. “OCEAN’s non-custodial payouts directly to miners from the block reward eliminate this risk and the pool’s undue influence on miners.”
The new pool was praised by industry observers on social media. “It is a mining pool with more decentralization at its core, which I think is good for the Bitcoin network,” said Lyn Alden, founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy.
The new project is essentially a reboot of Dashjr’s previous fee-free pool Eligius with updated code, Dashjr said in an X post.
“The old code has already been updated and tested and supports the latest Bitcoin addresses and mining machines,” he said in a follow-up post.
Barefoot Mining is Ocean’s first customer, and the pool expects to roll out further phases of Bitcoin decentralization improvements and upgrades in 2024.
The funding is led by Bitcoin proponent and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and includes Accomplice, Barefoot Bitcoin Fund, MoonKite, NewLayer Capital, Bitcoin Opportunity Fund and other strategic partners.
Ocean’s debut comes at a time when some legacy mining pools have faced controversy for censoring certain transactions, as “censorship resistance” is seen by many Bitcoiners as a core principle of the largest and most original blockchain.
“OCEAN solves a problem for Bitcoiners that we all feel – the further centralization of pools and mining pools that could endanger Bitcoin, and how this endangers a number of Bitcoin attributes that we hold dear,” Dorsey said.
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