Square's subsidiary, Square Crypto, will finance the development of the new version of the Bitcoin mining software, Stratum v2, which will allow miners connected to a pool to optimize their hashing power.
Square Crypto, led by Steve Lee, announced the delivery of a grant to the anonymous developer fi3, who will allocate the approved funds to create and implement a new version of the mining software stratum, developed by Brains, the founding company of the mining pool Slush pool, the first pool created for Bitcoin.
The new version of this software will allow to group, more efficiently, the power of hash rate of all nodes connected to a mining pool, optimizing mining power and allowing miners to have much more profitable results. In addition, this new version will also allow miners and pool operators to negotiate conditions and establish compliance agreements, to work together and in mutual agreement, for the benefit of both.
On its Twitter account, Square Crypto noted that the proposal presented by the developer “is large and complicated,” but that it is a complete proposal that makes a lot of sense for Bitcoin network miners.
Although the amount approved for the pseudonymous developer Fi3 was not specified in the statement, the company did announce that the new version of Stratum will possibly be ready for the second half of 2021. Likewise, Square Crypto noted that it is much easier for the company to provide financing and subsidies to pseudonymous developers like Fi3.
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Greater decentralization, freedom and security for miners
In a interview Speaking to CoinDesk, Lee said that once the Fi3 proposal is consolidated and implemented, miners participating in a mining pool will have greater freedom and security to carry out their activities, which will translate into better earnings and profits.
“Square Crypto is pleased to support the development of a high-quality open-source implementation of Stratum v2. This software benefits miners by maximizing their earnings and providing more freedom and security.”
The v2 version of the Stratum software is intended to improve the bugs and problems that were present in the first version. As indicated Jan Capek, co-founder and co-CEO of Braiins, in the past, the company was the one that literally invented Bitcoin mining through pools, so it was new unexplored territory, but today they recognize that it needs to be improved. For example, one of the problems that Čapek highlighted is that the communication between miners and the pool is not efficient, reliable or private, something that Stratum v2 is determined to change in order to avoid potential 'man in the middle' attacks.
As the company states on its official website, Stratum V2 focuses on “make data transfers more efficient, reduce physical infrastructure requirements for mining operations and increase security”This software will function as a communication protocol between ASIC mining equipment that will help miners to efficiently manage their communication with the pool operator.
In addition, Stratum v2 also introduces new subprotocols, specifically 3, which allow miners to select their own transaction sets, and establish a negotiation and agreement process with pool operators, significantly improving decentralization.
Personal freedom for developers
On the other hand, Fi3 thanked and recognized the work of Square Crypto, highlighting that these types of grants allow them to work with “something related to Bitcoin” with greater personal freedom. Fi3 has made numerous collaborations and contributions in the technological and crypto space, and much of their work can be seen on GitHub. In the last year, Fi3 has carried out a total of 63 jobs, as a collaboration with the mining company Bitminer Factory, of Italian origin.
Stratum v2 development will be done jointly with other industry experts such as Pavel Moravec y Jan Capek, from Braiins, in addition to the collaboration of Matt Corallo, former developer of Bitcoin Core, and Jan Kvapil, co-author of the proposal. Finally, the activation of Stratum v2 will be proposed in a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP , Bitcoin Improvement Proposal).
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