Proof of Work: Improving upon Bitcoin's mining pools can go a long way for decentralization

Quick Take

  • Blockholding attacks have been long discussed where someone (often from a competing pool) joins a mining pool that pays out based on the average hashrate of the pool but withholds valid blocks, so the pool misses out on earnings and potentially becomes unprofitable
  • F2pool a mining pool, recently mentioned that this sort of attack is actually happening quite often
  • Increasing decentralization at the mining pool level, like implementing Matt Corralo’s BetterHash can go a long way for Bitcoin 
The following newsletter is republished with permission from Eric Meltzer of Primitive Ventures, a global venture investment firm with a focus on blockchain and related technologies. You can follow Eric on Twitter at @wheatpond and subscribe here to Proof of Work.


© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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