Seven of the largest Bitcoin mining operations — Antpool, F2pool, Foundry, Spiderpool, Block Inc., MARA Foundation, and DMND — formally joined the Stratum V2 Working Group on May 7, 2026, marking the clearest industry shift yet toward miner-controlled transaction selection.
Stratum V2: From Push-Based Protocol to Miner Sovereignty
Stratum V2 succeeds the V1 protocol launched in 2012 by Marek "Slush" Palatinus. While V1 became the de facto industry standard, it gave pools full authority over transaction selection, transmitted data in plain text, and exposed miners to hashrate hijacking and surveillance. The newer protocol resolves these issues through authenticated end-to-end encryption, reducing bandwidth usage by about 60% on the pool side and 70% for miners, while introducing a "Task Declaration" subprotocol that allows miners to build their own block templates instead of accepting pool-assigned ones.
According to the official announcement, "By keeping Stratum V2 as a public, vendor-independent specification, we remove compatibility barriers and allow the ecosystem to focus on what matters most: improving efficiency, privacy, security, and miner autonomy, ultimately leading to higher profitability." Real-world testing by Braiins shows miners operating native V2 can achieve up to 7.4% higher profitability through faster block delivery, lower latency, and better fee capture.
Seven Giants Join Forces: Tens of Exahashes Moving Toward V2
Antpool CEO Andy Zhou said the company is "proud to support the broader adoption of Stratum V2," adding that alignment around an open, interoperable standard allows the industry to collaborate on efficiency, security, and decentralization. Spiderpool CTO Kenway Wang noted that the protocol supports miner-built blocks, which is especially useful for operators in bandwidth-constrained environments.
Braiins Pool and DMND are already running Stratum V2 in production; DMND launched in 2025 as one of the first pools to offer fully miner-selected blocks. Blitzpool supports V2 for solo miners, and the Stratum V2 Reference Implementation community pool continues testing. Founded in 2022 by Braiins and Spiral (Block's Bitcoin technology arm), the working group has operated for over four years and now enters "a new phase of accelerated development and deployment" with the addition of major operators.
Currently, roughly five pools control about 70% of global hashrate, so the combined hashrate represented by these new additions — tens of exahashes per second — is significant for decentralizing block content.
Low-Barrier Migration: Translation Proxies Ease Deployment
For individual Bitcoin miners, the practical shift depends on when pools enable V2 access for users. Translation proxies already allow Stratum V1 firmware to connect to V2 pools without requiring hardware or firmware updates, lowering the adoption barrier. With formal commitments from Antpool, Foundry, F2pool and others, Stratum V2 has crossed from technical standard to industry reality, promising a more decentralized and profitable mining future.