You may have heard about bitcoin mining pool centralisation. Stratum v2 and SRI (Stratum v2 Reference Implementation) are here to help by decentralising Bitcoin transaction selection. Listen and learn about how Stratum v2 Reference Implementation can help:

• Overview of Stratum v2 benefits
• Encryption, efficiency, censor resistance
• Are changes needed to Bitcoin Core? 
• Different actors in mining: Pools, Miners, Hardware
• Device firmware and translation proxy
• How you can help or contribute

Links:

• Donate: https://www.swan.com/stratum
• Site: Stratumprotocol.org
• Fi3 Twitter: @free_sht_max 
• Pavlenex Twitter: @pavlenex 
• Prior SLP ep on Stratum v2: SLP128 Jan Čapek – Stratum v2 Bitcoin Mining Protocol

Sponsors:

• Swan Bitcoin
• CoinKite.com(code LIVERA)
• Mempool.space

Stephan Livera links:

• Follow me on Twitter @stephanlivera
• Subscribe to the podcast
• Patreon @stephanlivera

Podcast Transcript:

Stephan Livera 00:00:01

Pavlenex and Fi3, welcome to the show.

FI3 00:00:04

Thank you.

Pavlenex  00:00:04

Hi Stephan, thanks for having us. Always a pleasure to be here.

Stephan Livera 00:00:07

Great. And so, yeah, we’re gonna get an update for listeners on what’s happening with STRATA V2 and stratum reference implementation SRI. Now let’s talk a little bit about the context of this and actually, firstly, let’s hear a little bit from you.

Philippe, do you want to just introduce yourself just for listeners who don’t already know you?

FI3 00:00:29

Yeah, I’m a F3. I’m working on Sri reference implementation.With the grant from Spiral science, three almost three years now, and yeah, that’s it.

Stephan Livera 00:00:44

And Pablo next, you’re obviously well known in the space for your work with BTC pay, but do you want to just tell us a little bit about what you’re doing on this project?

Pavlenex 00:00:52

Sure, Stephan.This time I’m joining as a contributor to SRI. As you said, Stratton, reference implementation and my role there is as I like to call it, janitor basically in a way a project manager. I just help these awesome guys. Fill whatever gaps I can and just be of use, and that’s pretty much my role there.

Stephan Livera 00:01:16

And so do you want to also just set the context here?As I understand the history of this is this idea, let’s say it kind of started as this idea called known as back then better hash by Matt Corello and then he then went and collaborated with some of the guys from brains. Pavel and that’s one particular implementation. And then as I understand what you’re working on now is sort of a continuation of that. And do you want to just explain a little bit about and? Elaborate there. Yes. So well straighten. V2 is the name of the protocol. Just the Lightning network is the name of the protocol. And then you have all these different.

Pavlenex 00:01:52

Implementations that implement the protocol in Stratum V2 context we have so far 2 adoption paths or implementations. One is brains implementation which is already implemented in their pool. They’re using it. It is not a complete implementation of the specification. But it’s been around for, I think now for two years, maybe even. On the other hand, you have Sri Stratton reference implementation, which is a complete implementation of the Protocol. It is also completely open source one and it is developed by an independent group of contributors, meaning that none of us work at one company. And it’s like contributors to the open-source software funded by different entities and we are part of the working group which ensures that stratum V2 gets adopted. I need to say that brains is also involved in a working group, so they do support our efforts. It’s not like that we have these competing implementations that they as a specification. Alters your And Powell really recognized that in order for straight and V2 to be adopted, implementation needs to be independently developed and led by an open-source community. So it’s a group of different people, different entities that is trying to bring Sri or straight reference implementation to adoption.

Stephan Livera 00:03:08

Gotcha. And while we’re here. Deeper. Can you explain for us and for listeners what are the benefits of stratum V2? Why? Why is this a good thing?

FI3 00:03:18

So in order to have blood mining, you have to have at least three actors. The Bitcoin node that create the candidate block, the pool that the send the jobs to the minor and make sure that each minor work on different jobs and the minor of course. To in order to make this actor communicate, tackle V2, define a set of messages that make that possible and the difference between Stratton V2 and Stratton V1 is that these messages. Instead of the two are. Use a binary data format and not JSON so are not text based and are a lot more efficient and also that in Stratton V2 we encrypt everything saw there. There are no more possibilities for man in the middle. And this can be a big issue in maybe third World countries where mining happened.

FI3 00:04:34

So we have these two improvement and we have also a completely new thing that is the job declarator that they centralized the transaction. So it’s no more the pool that. Select the transaction that will be in the next block. But it’s the minor. Each minor select the transaction that go in the next block.

Stephan Livera 00:05:00

So just to summarize there, we are having encryption by default whereas the current protocol is in the clear. So that as you mentioned, can stop this attack, known as a man in the middle attack. So this would mean, let’s say you’re a miner somewhere and somebody else who is intercepting your connection. Can try to hijack your hash rate and I’ve heard this is not just a theoretical thing. This has actually happened. For or it’s you know, there’s decent research out there or reasons to believe it has happened before. So it’s not just theoretical. So in that sense, miners have an incentive to adopt this kind of thing because they’re stopping this attack. That’s one example.There’s a performance improvement and I think probably the big one that everyone’s talking about is this idea of decentralizing. Mining because as we speak today, it’s probably something like 12 big mining pools and maybe six of them are bigger mining pools that exist in the world today and it’s important to understand the distinction between the individual miner who’s plugging his ASICS.

00:06:01 Stephan Livera

Then and the mining pool and currently the mining pool is the one selecting transactions that are considered as part of a template. And this the idea here is with stratum V2 you are giving the individual minors the possibility of selecting their own transactions that go into that. Clock template correct.

FI3 00:06:23

And this is not full decentralized mining. We have to make this point very clear because you are decentralizing only the transaction selection. Then there is also the payouts that can be decentralized and is another thing, and then the share accounting that can be the centralized and is another thing as well.

Stephan Livera 00:06:42

So just let me understand or explain my understanding there what we’re talking about here is most mining as we know it today is custodial, meaning you are trusting the pool to actually pay out the miners. That’s the first one you mentioned. And then the other part is the share accounting. So my understanding there is a Bitcoin mining pool today. The big pools, they. Basically, I wouldn’t be able to explain the maths behind her, how it works, but basically they assign. Pieces of work out to their miners. Those miners do work and then send it back. And based on that, they sort of say, OK, you did this amount of work, therefore you get this percentage of the reward that we earned as a pool. Is that definitely right?

FI3 00:07:23

It’s like that. And so you have to trust the pool that it’s accounting each share that you send to the pool in the right percentage because you don’t know how many share the other one are sending. So you don’t know the percentage that. You are in percentage of the reward you know which is the reward because you can look at the chain and see the earn that.

FI3 00:07:53

But you don’t know how many hash rate is in the pool. You know your hash rate, not the other ones. So you don’t know the exact percentage of that reward.

00:08:05 Stephan Livera

I see. So as you said, so I guess basically just to summarize the key point in terms of that censorship resistance point is that we are decentralizing the transaction selection only, but not necessarily the custodial component or the share accounting as you mentioned. And so can you also explain for us some of the different pieces here because you might be a mining pool operator, you might be an individual miner and then there’s also, let’s say, the hardware that we have to think about and understanding whether this, you know what software needs to be able to run at each of those different or buy these different could be different entities? Or in terms of the hardware versus software.

FI3 00:08:44

Let’s say that right now the majority of the minor are strutting the one. So let’s say that you have minors that are strutting the one and that you want to do transaction declaration. So you want to select your own transaction. In that case you need to have for sure the mining pool that will run if we use the Sri Stack, we run the software that is called pool. Then you have the individual miner or the company that the mining that will have a server. And in this server will run the TCP proxy, that is the translator proxy. It just receives from downstream strategy one messages and transform it in Stratton version 2. Messages for upstream. Then you will run. Also, I think that it’s called job declarator client. The job Declarator client will be connected with the Bitcoin node that it will be in the minor server and then it will connect with the job declarator server that will be in the server. This is all the stuff that you need to. Do something like that.

Stephan Livera 00:10:01

OK, so I guess explained in simple terms, it’s sort of like saying we need a way for the mining pool to communicate with the minors and this could be obviously it could be anywhere from a pleb minor at home with his one or two ASICS to small, you know, operations all the way to a big you know. Company who runs you know multiple?

Stephan Livera  00:10:24

Yeah, warehouse sized Bitcoin mining operations. But in that context they are a miner. They’re connecting to a pool because they want to reduce their variability because I guess that’s the other alternative, right? You could theoretically. If you ran a big enough operation, you could be a solo miner right now. In that case, you’re dealing with the variability you’re dealing with the volatility of, let’s say, when you find a block or when you don’t find a block and you would need to be mining, you need to have a pretty big operation to do this kind of thing. But for some people, maybe they would be doing that also, but it’s just not. It’s not, let’s say, accessible for people to be mining at that size, right?

FI3 00:11:02

Yeah, it’s not. I mean, it’s not convenient if you were not very, very, very, very. Big but if. You are or if you are not and you want to do solar mining, you can do that with the Sri Stack. You just don’t use the pool, but the job declarator. It’s all you need to to just mine without relying on the pool.

Stephan Livera 00:11:25

I see.And just from reading some of the documentation I can see there’s different job titles, so maybe you can explain this so I can see here job negotiation protocol and I believe is that what you’re saying with the job declarator? That’s the new the change in the terminology, and then I see another term here called Template distribution protocol. So I see this as being says used to get information. Out of about the next block out of Bitcoin core.

FI3 00:11:49

So this, this, this this is implemented in the Bitcoin deal and it’s the protocol that we need to send the block candidate from Bitcoin D to if you don’t do transaction selection to the pool, if you do transaction selection to the job declarator client. And which setup you are using?

Stephan Livera 00:12:12

OK, gotcha. And also if you could explain for us some of the different configurations I can see. The on the website you’ve got config ABC&D so could you just explain a little bit about the difference of the differences between those?

Pavlenex 00:12:26

I wanted to chime in on that because we we’ve been going back and forth with first, explaining the differences between what we call job negotiator and job declarator. So Stephan, as I said, straight and V2 specs are being ironed out as we get more. The option as more people use it, we figure out these holes that need to be ironed out. So one of those, well, ambiguity there was that the sub protocol that allows you to select transactions is called job negotiate. Peter, which then people meant that actually there will be a negotiation between what the minor proposes by selecting transactions from their note to what the pool actually proposes, and then people said Ohh, but there will be no negotiation. Pool will say you need to do this and then mine will and there will be back and forth. So we figured out that this is not. Was not the best naming and even Matt Corallo agreed that we need to change that. So we changed this. The name of this sub protocol to job declarator because it only does the job declaration, so it declares a job. The pool can say no and reject this proposal, but there will be no negotiation and this is also, I think, very important thing to mention is that if the poll declares, so declares what you proposed in a way or declared then. Miner will fall back to a different pool and at the end, if all all of these different pools decide to censor at the end of the day, minor will fall back to solo mine.

Pavlenex 00:13:57

One good point here also to mention that that means that entire hash rate of the pool will eventually fall back to solo mine if the pool decides to censor. So it is not just me, but if you decide to reject all of these different miners that are mining on your pool, eventually all of them will fall back to solo mine and that transaction and all that. Cash rate will eventually help and get that transaction in. That’s one of the, I think, biggest misconceptions that happens with regards to job negotiator, now known as Job. Later and now, maybe I can talk a little bit about flexibility and why straight on V2 is such an awesome, awesome protocol, because it allows for different entities or different users big level of flexibility, meaning that all of.

Stephan Livera 00:14:28

I see.

Pavlenex 00:14:44

These different components. That you and Fi three talked about. You as a user can pick and choose. Oh I maybe want to use this. I don’t want a pool. I don’t want this. I can use this and then you can tailor it for your specific needs and I really enjoyed that part because I’m like a big fan of flexibility and giving freedom to users to use software in any way that they. Be fit. So all these different configurations if somebody goes to our website which is straight to protocol.org, you can see all of these different configs in November. Last year, we shipped one of these configurations, which we called milestone one or MVP one and that particular configuration allowed miners. Who ran straight to V1, firmer as Filippo earlier explained, to connect to an SV2 pool, that specific configuration did not have the ability for individual miners to select.

Pavlenex 00:15:39

Sections with our recent update few weeks back, we actually created the job declaration, added this sub protocol and now miners who use straighten version one framework can connect to an SV2 pool and on top of that also do selection do transaction selection through their own node that they are running. So I hope this helps. So there is a bunch of these. And fix that. People can maybe go to the website that read. We also have graphics and I’m soon hoping that we can animate them in a way because there is it’s a very complex protocol. It’s not easy to understand all these different components and how they communicate with each other, what messages are being sent back and forth. So we are really hoping to make by illustrating this to make it like accessible to people, to understand how it all works.

Stephan Livera 00:16:23

Gotcha. And so as I’m understanding you there, I’m seeing for example config here on the site where saying miners can use SV2 even if they run SV1 firmware. So as I’m understanding this idea is you might be running some old. Firmware or maybe you? You have a Bitcoin mining machine, an ASIC machine that has, you know, old firmware. You’re not able to update it, but using this software you could still use strata V2. That’s how I’m understanding you.

Pavlenex 00:16:49

Yes, exactly. That’s the beauty of it. And that’s done through what we refer to T proxy or translation proxy, which is a proxy that you would run and maybe home or mining farm and it would allow basically S V1 messages go in translation proxy translated them to SV2 messages and then they are being sent to the pool which then understands. V2. So you’re connecting through S V2. Well, via this proxy.

00:17:15 Stephan Livera

I see. And so as I mean, yeah, so we don’t have to kind of walk through every single config. I think listeners can go if they really want to. They can go into detail there, but I guess the point really is that there’s different types of configurations based on what firmware you have, what pull you’re connected to, what kind of minor you are, that label you to still participate. And use stratum V2. And I think it would be handy and useful for listeners if we can zoom out and justice think about transaction selection in general and how censorship would happen and how.

Stephan Livera 00:17:44

What’s the response? Right.So as an example, I think it’s probably fair to say mine is and most pools will select, you know, in general they’ll just select based on. What’s the most profitable right? Like who is paying the most? Satoshi’s per V byte. That’s just in general, how you would expect them to operate. But how would it look like in a censorship world? Would it be that let’s say hypothetically a Bitcoin mining pool is saying we will do censorship based on the, let’s say the OFAC sanctions list as an example. So could you just talk us through that? Scenario like what would that look like and then how would that you know, how would how could particular transactions, you know, be caught up in that net for censorship and how could they still be included Despite that?

FI3 00:18:28

So what’s happened is that. To select transaction you use the Bitcoin dim and you as you said that you select transaction based on the maximum fee. Now if for example a pool don’t want to based on the offer list or everything.

FI3 00:18:52

Doesn’t want to have a transaction when the proxy or the minor send the next job or the next block candidate. To the pool. They pull say no, but this is very important that each miner is running the standard software. So each minor that is working with the pool it’s running Bitcoin D and it’s running for example as Ari software. So what happened now happened that the minor see that. The block that it’s sent to the pool, it’s a a good block because it’s the one that. Have been done with Bitcoin D and each miner will see that the pool is censoring automatically because if they run standard software, it’s what will happen and So what we did. Is that each Sri proxy when a pool say that do not want to mine? Docker it automatically switch to another pool so you can have a list of pool that you want to use and when the pool refused to accept the block. That you propose. You automatically switch to another pool in this list. This what it means. It means that if for example. The 9090% of their straight that is with the A say propose a block.

FI3 00:20:29

And this block get refused if the 90% of the straight with the pool A it’s doing transaction selection when the pool refusal block the 90% of the trade. Of that pool. Will automatically switch to another pool or to solar mining so. It’s very inconvenient for the poor. Say no because it will lost all dash rate that have.

Stephan Livera 00:20:56

And so I guess as I’m understanding you, the Series. If people are operating in Australia V2 context then they will automatically switch to another pool and so now in order to do that I guess you would need to have. You might have need to have set up in advance multiple. Let’s say user names with different pools because you need to have like a full back and another. Rollback and so on. So I guess that’s just the context here, that if you are a minor you would you would have to go do that in order. To really make the most of this stratum V2 censorship resistance.

FI3 00:21:27

Yeah, the, the, the important things in my opinion is that also you give the incentive to the bullet to not censor because I mean you give a very big incentive to the pool to not censor because it will lost almost all the hash rate. That its mining with that. So it’s that. That’s the important thing. Maybe you don’t.You never need to rely on the switch input if the incentive work.

Stephan Livera 00:21:58

I say and one other thing in terms of. Detecting censorship is it just as simple as looking at the most profitable? What would have been the most profitable block to mine? And then seeing Ohh there was a difference there and therefore this transaction is being censored somehow or is there something more complicated to this or does it require manual intervention? As an example like this you know?

FI3 00:22:18

It’s very simple because the minor just send the message to the pool where he say which transaction you want to put in. The next block in the block. That is working on. So the pool can do two things. One is to say, OK, go ahead and the other is to say no, I do not accept. That block if. The pool say no, it’s censoring just that.

00:22:44 Stephan Livera

I see. So it’s based on, yeah, if the pool just doesn’t accept the transactions. That you were. You were proposing as part of that block, so. Sort of. Paul’s adopting this thing. I guess the other argument people could say is, hey, what if the pools just tell you now beat it. I don’t care about you and your strata V2, I’m just going to keep doing my thing with. What I’m already doing? Is there something there or is it? Do you think there’s more? Actually, there’s an incentive here that people are going to adopt stratum V2.

FI3 00:23:13

I mean. But the pool seems very interested to adopt strategy, so I will say that this does not seem to be a an issue. Maybe part can say something more about that.

Stephan Livera 00:23:24

Yeah, yeah.

Pavlenex 00:23:26

I mean for if I was a pool and there was the protocol allowed me to censor and be like the central point of failure for my business, that would be a risk. So in my opinion, if a pool adopts straight and V2, they’re getting rid of this liability and they can just say, well, we are not the ones responsible for this, so. Basically, there is a bunch of individual miners that does do this, and you as a. You know, government trying to tell us which transactions to include or not cannot do anything because this is how protocol works and all we can do is just reject it. But in that case, these transactions will still end up being mined, because all of these different miners on our pool would then switch to our competitors or just end up solo mining.

Stephan Livera 00:24:12

I say yeah. So I guess you could basically make an argument there that you as a pool operator might want to push that function to somebody else and say ohh look I I’m not choosing who’s putting these transactions into a block. So I guess there’s, yeah, maybe there’s a little bit of an argument then. And and I suppose it also does matter where the pool is headquartered, right? Because if some of the pools are in the US, some are in China, some in, you know, other countries, it obviously helps if they’re across different countries.

Stephan Livera 00:24:40

Yes, exactly. So Pavlenex, do you mind explaining a little bit about who’s involved with this project? Because as I understand, there’s different companies, different organizations involved.

Pavlenex 00:24:50

Sure, Stephan. So as I said, it is very important that protocol or implementation that is very important or critical for Bitcoin. Centralization is developed in a way that is also, in a way, dissent Realized so there is no single entity or company behind Sri.

Pavlenex 00:25:09

It’s a bunch of contributors that go try to get grants from different companies or different companies. In some cases, even sending their employees to work on our implementation and help us. So that’s also a big help for us. There are a bunch of entities involved that provided grants. I’ll just list them in alphabetic way, if that’s, I guess, fine it’s bit. Brains foundry, Galaxy HRF, or Human Rights foundation spiral and summer of Bitcoin and summer of Bitcoin is also great because they send us all of these young contributors who are passionate to get involved in open source foundry, specifically funded 1 contributor to work on.

Pavlenex 00:25:53

The specific job negotiator, sub protocol, or job declarator as we call it, and they also, yeah, I know it’s a bit confusing with just going back and forth, but I hope that soon we will iron out that ambiguity between the declarator and. And they also have a bunch of devs that contribute to to to to the project and we are very grateful for all of these entities that help in different.

Ways we also Swan is also helping us fundraise so they we recently launched a fundraiser on the amazing open sets. And if you are interested in helping us get some funding, you can go there and donate through open sets as well. So one is helping us basically spread the word about this as well. And there have been great.

Stephan Livera 00:26:44

And of course, yeah, we’ll put the links in the show notes. So listeners who want to contribute, you can go there and do so and so then in terms of the work to create Sri, as I understand, there’s multiple layers here. So as we were talking about before, there’s. Software that the pool runner or pool operator has to run. There’s software that the minor could be operating and then is there also an involvement of the on the part of the hardware, so the manufacturer? There’s other manufacturers also having to play ball here, right? So do you need to reach out to the likes of Bitmain or, you know, the creators of what’s minor microBT or others to ask them, hey, can you include this into your new firmware so that we have stratum V2 support in the ASIC device?

Pavlenex 00:27:35

Well, as we said, luckily we created the translation proxy, which allows people not to have stratum version 2 firmer.So that barrier is removed in order to use straight V2, you don’t have to wait for any of the manufacturers to upgrade their firm. Though it would be very helpful if at some point and we are very interested in, you know, learning about this and communicating with this different, firmer and basically ASIC manufacturers as well. We want to. Hear and talk to them. So if any of those are listening, I’m sure there are. There is a bunch of them listening to this show, please. Let us know. Obviously it would be awesome if it was all out-of-the-box. You just plug in the server, the minor, it works, it connects. Right now it is a little bit more challenging, but it is not that hard. I also think so. It would be great to have a firmer component in in in this, but it is not a blocker to the adoption.

Stephan Livera 00:28:32

Touch option. Yeah. And so then in terms of what it looks like, so let’s say you’re a miner or you’re a pull operator and you don’t have it built out-of-the-box, right? Let’s say you don’t have, you know, starting V2 support out-of-the-box. What does it look like? Does it look like running custom software of some sort to be able to? You know to to use mining with Strat and V2. In the future, so maybe I can just on.

Pavlenex 00:28:57

A high level and then Philippe I’m sure can correct me if I’m wrong on some details. But right now, miners use something called proxy which aggregates all these connections so that there is efficiency in communication. With, if you use Stratum V, if you want to use straight V2, you basically have to run this proxy and it is just like very easy to deploy it, just it’s not challenging, it’s not really. Part I’m sure there is something we can do to reduce even the barrier there, but ideally you just need this proxy and then you just paste the link in your minor to the pool. So if pool is adopting, obviously the SV2 then it can be easy as that and imagine if you also even had a firmware component to it. Then it would just be connecting to a pool just like. Any other? Well, basically pull that you’re connecting to today, so the only barrier here now is that proxy because we don’t have the firmware component, but it is not something that unusual for miners. They’re used to running proxies.

FI3 00:29:56

Yeah, I wanted also to add just one thing, it’s exactly how it work, but also the fact to add the proxy is not something inconvenient. I mean, if I am a minor that have several minors, I want to have a proxy between the miners and the pool, so it’s just. How should work also with SV1?

Stephan Livera 00:30:19

I see. And so that’s essentially as you’re saying that these are features that they would want to run anyway because they want to make it accessible for customers, right? If you’re a, if you’re reminding Paul, you want to make it easy for people to mine to your pool, because obviously that’s like a customer for you. Or you might have a business model around that and so. I guess that’s kind of the obvious point. Yeah. So one other area I’m curious and I’m sure listeners will be curious as well is are there any changes to Bitcoin core required in order to make this happen in order to make stratum V2A possibility?

FI3 00:30:54

I mean, they are not required, but they are they how it should go. I mean you can do that without modifying Bitcoin D. Or you can just have a partition between the, but the best thing will be implement the template provider in Bitcoin, so Bitcoin needs to be capable of generating the SD2 message in the SD2 data format so that can be connected. With the job declarator or with the pool, and this will also allow Bitcoin Day to push the. Jobs and not the pool or the job declarator to poll for new jobs This is better because it’s more efficient and more you have less latency and a lot.

FI3 00:31:45

Of good things. I see. So basically it would be really good to have, but it’s not strictly necessary. You can do that without having it, but we want to have it.

Stephan Livera 00:31:56

I see. OK, yeah. And but it seems like it’s not that controversial that it will. It is likely that the changes that are required would come into Bitcoin call.

Pavlenex 00:32:07

We’ve discussed with a bunch of core contributors as well and they’re eagerly waiting for us to also post a PR, Chris in particular. Is working on this and we are hoping to have something very. For them to review.

FI3 00:32:22

Yeah, I want. I want to add that at the beginning like two years ago, we decided to, we wanted to implement that on Bitcoin, be using the last library, the last library that we have in SRI. And this was controversial. So I did appear about that and now. A lot of people was very OK with that, so we decided to just do everything in C++.

Stephan Livera 00:32:50

So has there been any significant pushback on this or is it that most people want this, but it’s a matter of having this work being completed and done and you know these details being ironed? Out, let’s say.

Pavlenex 00:33:03

I mean there, there hasn’t been any pushback from what I know, I’m sure that there are some people that may be against it. There are some Twitter people that don’t agree with it because. Well, most of first of all, I think that they are not. They lack education component which we are also trying to communicate better, better educate people on how all this works, which is why we are also here. Some people call this brains conspiracy, even though this has nothing to do with brains taking over. So you know, there is a lot of misunderstanding. With regards to this, but some major pushbacks we haven’t seen, we’ve seen actually quite the opposite. We’ve seen quite a few pull operators approaching us being in our discord, talking to us, providing feedback. And also first, which is also important, helping us develop this software. So right now. It is mostly up to us to deliver this and so that people can adopt it and the biggest reason why it’s not been adopted yet, I think, is that we still have all these components that we need to iron out in order for it to be widely adopted. But I think in four or five months, I I don’t want to upset deadlines.

Pavlenex  00:34:12

But we may be in in let’s say that in four or five months or six, maybe we’ll have something that people can already adopt and maybe even pools can adopt this. So just to those Twitter people, it’s not that it’s not adopted because, you know, nobody is using it to just the software out there was not ready. It was a very small team. We’re expanding. We have more people now so it is easier and also one more thing. Testing all of this is also not easy because miners are expensive. It’s just a handful of devs so.We sometimes in order to test we need equipment. We need help of minors, mining pools. So that’s that is also one of the barriers through all of this because you know, you need a lot of hash rate in order to test this. On Main net, let’s say. So we’ve only done some tests on test net so far. Right.

Stephan Livera 00:35:03  

So yeah, and so I suppose once you see software advanced and as you said testing and all of these things take place, do you see this being driven by miners who are pushing for it to say, hey, I want to use strata V2 or do you kind of see it like a top down thing like maybe pools? Say, hey, we’re just going to switch it on our side. And if you have stratum V2, go ahead and use.

Pavlenex 00:35:26

I mean, to me it’s a no brainer. It can be both ways. It can be top down and bottom up because miners may want prefer to have better decentralization of the network, but they also want security. They also want optimization pool wants to get rid of responsibility, but they also take don’t want anybody to hijack their hash rate, so they care about security. I think in the end of the day, it’s is everybody are incentivized to adopt it in a way there is no, no single component in this regards that is. I don’t know, dissatisfied by or not incentivized to adopt it.

Stephan Livera 00:36:00

So thankfully I’ll let let’s rephrase. This way pools and miners have an incentive to adopt Stratton V2. Let’s put it that way. So it’s then a matter of, as you said, having the software written, having it tested, having it reviewed, having people practice and use it and see it working in practice and then decide, OK, let’s shift to this. So yeah, is there any? Are there any other? I guess things that you want to? Call out here or areas where you are looking for assistance, yeah.

Pavlenex 00:36:33

I’m to call to action guy, so I’ll take this one over Philipo. So yeah, it would be great if more miners would come to our disk or chat and help us test the software. So currently we have our earlier release PS2 as we call it. It would be awesome to get feedback from them we tested on certain minors, but we obviously don’t have access to all of these miners.It is very expensive endeavor for, I mean a very small team of open-source people, so. We would really. Love to get feedback from minors as they test things out, and I guess once we launch our next update, which we refer to as MVP three or milestone three, I’m really hoping that miners will get even more engaged and provide us feedback. So yeah, getting user feedback is critical and then hopefully testing it. On Main net would be really awesome, but for that we need a lot of miners plugged.

00:37:30 Stephan Livera

So I guess one other area to finish on is around the why right? Part of the why of Bitcoin is this idea of financial freedom being able to spend and receive? Without being censored for that, and I think there is a risk that in the future that, let’s say, if certain governments try to censor, they try to say, you know, you may not spend to this particular address or you may you know that that if they are able to stop. Certain transactions from. During then that sort of impinges this notion of Bitcoin as a censorship resistant protocol. And so I guess that’s probably the the the why, right? So is there anything else you guys want to? Add on that aspect of it.

Pavlenex 00:38:16

I mean, you summarized it pretty well, Stephan. I just want to add that we all love Bitcoin is because Bitcoin is freedom. And there are all these small barriers with regards to mining pools. Hopefully straighten V2 will allow Bitcoin to be freedom money without censorship, so that’s why I’m excited that that’s why I got involved with SV2.

FI3 00:38:42

And I can just add that in regard of that at the end is the minor responsibility to not allow censorship on Bitcoin.

Stephan Livera 00:38:52

Well, I’ll put all the links in the show notes and the website just for people to read out is stratumprotocol.org. I believe there’s a fundraising site, so I’ll put that link in the show notes also. So listen, as you can find that over at Stephanlivera.com, Pavlenex and Philippo. Thank you for joining me.

Pavlenex 00:39:08

Today, thanks for having us, Stephan. Really appreciate all the great conversation.