The new update will allow selection of transactions through a new sub-protocol and miner nodes.
A new Reference Implementation Update (SRI) for Stratum v2 has been announced by the protocol developers.
According to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine, the new update is “a major step in democratizing transaction selections in bitcoin cluster mining and decentralization,” as it allows miners to select transactions via a new sub-protocol and their node.
The developers invite miners, pools, firmware makers, and the community to test the new implementation using the getting started guide they set up, with a processor or real mining devices. They also invite users to give feedback after testing using this form.
It is recommended that new users test the software using SV1 mining devices by connecting to an SV2 pool through Translation Proxy. “Miners will run their own template provider (bitcoind) with the maximum fee policy,” the statement describes. “Inside the translation proxy is a worker negotiator that runs a sub-protocol responsible for distributing miner patterns to the pool.”
The press release describes how the Job Negotiator “in combination with a pattern provider, shifts the responsibility back to miners or an independent third party to provide a new pattern (select transactions), thereby making the bitcoin pool infrastructure more decentralized. “.
According to the description of how a Job Negotiator (JN) works, the downstream mining farm runs a JN that connects to a JN run by the pool and requests a unique identifier for the mining jobs using the AllocateMiningJobToken message. The pool returns a unique token and coinbase output used for payments. The downstream JN then connects to a template provider, which sends a new template and SetNewPrevHash to the downstream JN. With these, a new job can be constructed and the downstream JN sends a CommitMiningJob message containing a proposed set of transactions to the pool. The pool still accepts the miner’s proposal in the current iteration, but in the next version, miners will have the option to revert to another pool or a solo mine if the pool does not accept transactions selected by the mining provider. downstream models. The translation proxy then sends a SetCustomMiningJob message to the pool, which verifies the job and returns a SetCustomMiningJobSuccess message. The translation proxy then translates the message and sends the mining.notify message to mining devices, which submit shares to the pool through the translation proxy.
With the Stratum V1 mining protocol currently adopted by the industry, the handful of mining pools participate in the selection of transactions, which makes bitcoin more prone to censorship. Stratum v2 is an updated protocol, which ensures that transaction selection is done by miners themselves.
The community has already tested the software on several popular mining devices; the press release encourages anyone testing on different platforms to fill out a form.
“With the next update,” the press release reads, “we will be adding a fallback feature that would allow miners to fall back to another pool or solo mine in case the pool chooses not to accept their suggestion. In this case, the miners would disconnect and fall back.
Other updates include the goal of improving encryption and ensuring compliance with the latest specification updates, in addition to plans to allow pools to perform spot checks on block validity. The most important development will be submitting a pull request for the pattern provider in Bitcoin Core.
Developers thank Stratum v2 crowdfunding supporters and include a link to their Discord for those who want to get involved in the community.