Tether, the stablecoin company, will transfer all current and future Bitcoin hashrate to the OCEAN mining pool, contributing to the mission of decentralizing the Bitcoin block-building process.
Tether, the world's largest stablecoin issuer, has just announced plans to deploy all of their current and future Bitcoin hashrate to the OCEAN mining pool to enhance the decentralization of the Bitcoin network.
"Deploying hashrate to OCEAN aligns with both our mining investment strategy and the broader mission of protecting Bitcoin from centralization forces," said Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino in an announcement on April 15.
Efforts to Decentralize Bitcoin Block Building
Although Bitcoin hashrate has been distributed, the block-building process is still primarily concentrated among a few major actors - notably Foundry USA, AntPool, and ViaBTC.
The OCEAN protocol attempts to distribute this process by empowering Miners to build their own block templates using the open-source DATUM protocol, reducing dependence on centralized intermediaries and enhancing censorship resistance.
Tether's deployment will leverage OCEAN's DATUM software across all global mining operations, including rural areas in Africa. Tether is currently deploying Bitcoin hashrate at locations in Uruguay, Paraguay, and El Salvador, where the $144 billion stablecoin issuer is headquartered.
These initiatives come around the time Tether announced a $500 million investment in Bitcoin mining operations at the end of 2023.
OCEAN was created by Bitcoin core developer Luke Dashjr in 2023 and has received support from individuals like Block CEO Jack Dorsey. OCEAN has also moved its headquarters to El Salvador in May 2024.
Currently, the OCEAN protocol mines approximately 0.2% to 1% of Bitcoin blocks, according to data from mempool.space. In the past week, they mined nine blocks, including two consecutive blocks 892342 and 892343 on April 14.
However, OCEAN's output remains a small fraction compared to Foundry USA, AntPool, and ViaBTC, which mined 331, 199, and 161 Bitcoin blocks respectively during the same period - accounting for over 66% of total blocks.
Collaboration with Tether could provide a necessary boost to OCEAN's hashrate, which reached 18.3 exahash per second (EH/s) in the past 24 hours, while Foundry USA's hashrate during the same period exceeded 298 EH/s.
