Stratum, the bitcoin mining protocol, is getting an upgrade, and a new report from the mining team at Galaxy Digital offers a comprehensive review of why Stratum V2 matters.

Read the full report here.

Outside of the mining industry, most Bitcoin investors don’t realize that miners use intermediary protocols to interface with Bitcoin instead of interacting directly with the Bitcoin protocol. Even fewer investors understand the sequence of mining protocol upgrades those miners have adopted throughout Bitcoin’s history.

Galaxy’s Stratum V2 report helps educate the broader Bitcoin community on the improved security, efficiency, and profitability from Stratum V2 for miners. The Braiins team is excited and grateful for this thorough analysis from the Galaxy team, as they work alongside Braiins and other teams to build better technologies for Bitcoin mining.

For readers unfamiliar with the evolution of Bitcoin mining over the years, Galaxy’s report summarizes the history of both mining hardware and protocols from the earliest versions to the modern status quo. The report also explains in detail the various known weaknesses and defects of prior mining protocols (including the older version of Stratum) that create the need for an upgrade.

Focusing on Stratum V2, Galaxy’s report explains the need for and benefits from adopting an upgraded mining protocol, including timeliness, security, profitability and more. Here’s a short summary of those focus areas and why they matter. At the end of this post, readers will also find a collection of continued reading suggestions published by the Braiins team to explore in more detail the improvements and functionalities of the Stratum V2.

• It’s time to upgrade. Mapping out the dates of previous mining protocol upgrades compared to Bitcoin’s hashrate growth and the introduction of new mining hardware, Galaxy’s analysis suggests the mining industry is due for a protocol upgrade. In fact, it’s probably overdue.
• Security matters. Beyond just timing and historical trends, current mining protocol (i.e.  Stratum V1) contain known vulnerabilities that the mining industry simply cannot afford to ignore anymore given the rapid growth of hashrate and investor capital flooding into the mining market, in addition to increasing scrutiny as some governments attempt to eradicate mining from within their borders while others attempt to nationalize and control it. Man-In-The-Middle attacks and pool skimming are a couple of the weaknesses that Stratum V2 fixes.
• What else is new? The new version of Stratum doesn’t just fix old problems. It also introduces a long list of new and improved features, like user flexibility, worker authentication, encrypted connections, and detailed documentation. Galaxy’s report compares Stratum V1 and V2, noting all the changes and improvements offered by the newest version.‍
• Will miners use it? Pushing adoption of Stratum V2 is a key part of the protocol’s long-term success and a focal point of Galaxy’s report. Most miners, especially large-scale operations, care about profitability above all else. And ease of use is another top concern. The report explains how to best advance Stratum V2 adoption by focusing on these two aspects of the upgrade.

Galaxy’s report compares Stratum V1 and V2 using 11 different metrics.

Read the full report to see the full comparative analysis. 

Stratum V2 represents historic improvements to security, profitability, and efficiency of pool Bitcoin mining. Development of a full open-source implementation is ongoing, but adoption has already begun with partial implementation we offer through our pool (Braiins Pool) and our custom ASIC firmware (Braiins OS).

Read more here.

Thanks to Galaxy for highlighting the importance of Stratum V2 in their report.

For additional information on the Stratum protocol’s functionality and Stratum V2’s improvements, here’s a collection of additional articles written by the Braiins team.

• Stratum V2 Overview – browse a comprehensive list of over a dozen changes and improvements included in the newest version of Stratum, including example use cases, terminology definitions, and V1 comparisons.
• Stopping Hashrate Robbery – understand how Stratum V2 improves security on multiple vectors for miners running the upgraded protocol, including eliminating the threat to mining revenue and basic security from hashrate theft.
• Decentralizing Mining with Stratum V2 – learn how the Bitcoin mining ecosystem stands to experience unprecedented decentralization from features included in the Stratum V2 upgrade like miner-dictated work templates and transaction selection. 

Last thought: Bitcoin’s protocol has had several key upgrades in the past few years, including soft forks for Segregated Witness (SegWit) and Taproot. Now miners get a protocol upgrade too with Stratum V2.