Seven major Bitcoin mining pools, including industry leaders AntPool and Foundry, have joined the Stratum V2 working group to develop an open standard protocol. The collaboration aims to improve communication efficiency between pools and individual miners, potentially reducing block mining times. This move occurs as Bitcoin mining difficulty is projected to increase, placing further pressure on an industry where up to 20% of miners are currently unprofitable due to high energy costs and low hashprice levels.
Seven major Bitcoin mining pools have joined the Stratum V2 working group to develop an industry-wide open standard protocol. AntPool, Block Inc, F2Pool, Foundry, MARA Foundation, SpiderPool, and DMND are now collaborating on the mining pool communication standard.
The standard could reduce the time it takes pools to successfully mine blocks. “Bitcoin mining is competitive and fragmented by design. It is a race for efficiency where a millisecond can determine whether a miner wins a block or loses to a competitor,” stated an announcement from Stratum V2.
Foundry and AntPool are the two largest Bitcoin mining pools by hashrate. Foundry controls nearly 30% of the global mining pool hashrate, while AntPool controls about 17.7%, according to data from Hashrate Index.
Developing an open standard helps decentralize the mining industry. It also gives miners greater flexibility in choosing block templates.
Bitcoin mining difficulty is projected to rise again in the next difficulty adjustment in May. The difficulty is estimated to increase from 132.47 T to 135.64 T on May 15, 2026, as mentioned by CoinWarz.
Rising network difficulty and increasing energy costs place additional pressure on the competitive Bitcoin mining industry. Up to 20% of Bitcoin miners are unprofitable under current conditions, according to asset manager CoinShares.
Hashprice, a critical metric for miner profitability, fell to between $36 and $38 per Petahash-second per day. CoinShares stated this is at near or at breakeven profit levels for some miners.
