Bitcoin enthusiasts and crypto mining enthusiasts alike have reason to be excited about Jack Dorsey’s progress into becoming a Bitcoin believer over the past few years. Back in November, Mummolin, Inc, had successfully completed a $6.2 million seed funding round, led by none other than the co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Block, Inc., Jack Dorsey.
Dorsey’s involvement in this venture is a testament to his belief in the power of decentralization and the importance of maintaining the integrity of Bitcoin’s core principles. As he stated, “OCEAN is solving a problem for Bitcoiners that I think all of us feel—further centralization of mining pools that could plague Bitcoin, and how that risks a bunch of Bitcoin attributes that we hold dear.”
OCEAN, the initiative launched by Mummolin, Inc., aims to revolutionize Bitcoin mining by introducing a truly decentralized and transparent mining pool. Unlike traditional mining pools, where the pool operators have custody of the block rewards and transaction fees before distributing them to miners, OCEAN employs a non-custodial approach. Miners receive their block rewards directly from the coinbase transaction, eliminating the risk associated with pool operators potentially withholding payments.
This innovative approach addresses one of the key concerns in the mining industry today: centralization.
Additionally, OCEAN aims to tackle the issue of transparency in the mining industry. Unlike most pools that keep miners in the dark about the underlying transactions they are committing their hashrate to, OCEAN takes a “transparency-first approach” by publicly disclosing all transactions included in its block templates to miners before mining.
Mark Artymko, the co-founder and President of Mummolin, explained that traditional Bitcoin mining pools take exclusive custody of block rewards and transaction fees before splitting them up amongst miners. This gives them the ability to withhold payment from individual miners, whether by their own choice or by legal requirement. OCEAN’s non-custodial payouts directly to miners from the block reward remove this risk and the pool’s undue influence over miners.
With Jack Dorsey’s backing and the involvement of prominent investors such as Accomplice, Barefoot Bitcoin Fund, MoonKite, NewLayer Capital, and the Bitcoin Opportunity Fund, OCEAN is well-positioned to disrupt the mining industry and further decentralize Bitcoin mining on a global scale.
You may also get a kick out of reading our previous article on Jack Dorsey: Jack Dorsey and Jay Z create trust endowment with 500 bitcoin.
Getting Started with Mining on the Ocean.xyz Pool
If you’re interested in mining Bitcoin in a decentralized and transparent manner, getting started with OCEAN is relatively straightforward. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
- Enter the pool’s stratum address (mine.ocean.xyz:3334) into your ASIC interface. Depending on your mining hardware, you may need to input the information slightly differently, such as:
- The full URL: stratum+tcp://mine.ocean.xyz:3334
- The hostname and port separately: Hostname: mine.ocean.xyz, Port: 3334
- Enter your Bitcoin address as your username and “x” (without quotes) as the password. Here are a few important points to keep in mind:
- OCEAN supports P2PKH (original addresses starting with “1”), P2SH (multisignature or P2SH-Segwit addresses starting with “3”), Bech32 (Segwit addresses starting with “bc”), and Bech32m (Taproot addresses starting with “bc” and longer than Bech32) address types.
- Your Bitcoin address must be entered exactly as it is. Hand-typing addresses is generally not recommended.
- You can append a short custom worker name to the address by using a period (.) between the address and worker name. For example: myaddress.myworkername. This can help track your miners or groups of miners more precisely on the OCEAN dashboard.
- If no worker name is given, “default” is used.
- Multiple miners or connections can be made for the same username/worker name, and they will be aggregated.
- Some miners may have length limits on usernames, so always check the OCEAN dashboard to confirm your miner is functioning correctly with the pool after setup.
- Receive Bitcoin: Check your miner’s stats page on the OCEAN dashboard to confirm everything is set up correctly. It may take a few minutes after your first accepted proof of work submission for stats to be available.
By joining OCEAN, you’ll be contributing to the decentralization of Bitcoin mining while benefiting from the pool’s innovative non-custodial approach and commitment to transparency. As OCEAN continues to roll out additional phases of Bitcoin decentralization improvements and upgrades in 2024, the mining industry may undergo a significant shift towards a more decentralized and secure future.