Slush Pool to Let Hashers Vote on Segregated Witness Activation: “Mining Pools Should Remain Neutral”

Bitcoin accepted

Image by torridluna
Posted via email from torrid’s posterous

Bitcoin’s oldest mining pool, Slush Pool, will let its miners vote on the Segregated Witness soft fork proposed by Bitcoin Core. By passing this choice down to individual miners that connect to the pool (sometimes also referred to as “hashers”) Slush Pool hopes to remove itself as a decision maker from the equation.

Speaking to Bitcoin Magazine, Slush Pool operator Marek “Slush” Palatinus stated:

“Satoshi’s idea was not to have a few entities control the network. As a mining pool we shouldn’t rule.”

Segregated Witness

Mining pools offer Bitcoin miners a solution to combine their hash power, sharing any block rewards they may find. Last year, Slush Pool was the first pool to also offer their hashers a chance to indicate preference on a potential block size limit increase hard fork. Whenever a hasher participating in the pool finds a block, that specific block is tagged with the choice of the hasher.

As a proposed soft fork per the requirement established by Bitcoin Core, Segregated Witness will require support from 95 percent of all hash power on the network to activate. Continuing its policy to put hashers in control, Slush Pool — which accounts for six percent of all hash power on the Bitcoin network — will let hashers vote in support of, or against, Segregated Witness activation.

Speaking to Bitcoin Magazine, Palatinus explained why he believes Slush Pool should refrain from making decisions on behalf of its hashers:

“Pools are just service providers for miners, which makes mining easier and optimizes costs. I don’t consider it much different from internet service providers, and I think we should adhere to similar principles of net neutrality. At Slush Pool, therefore, our long-term strategy is to remain neutral on potential hard forks and soft forks, and to offer tools for miners to decide for themselves.”

Palatinus himself does hope the Segregated Witness soft fork will activate. The co-inventor of pooled mining believes that the proposal will offer sign…

“IndyWatch Feed Crypto”

Slush Pool to Let Hashers Vote on Segregated Witness Activation: “Mining Pools Should Remain Neutral”