Seven Major Bitcoin Mining Pools Join Stratum V2 Working Group to Standardize Protocol

Bitcoin mining pools have widely used Stratum V1 since 2012, with operators determining block templates and which transactions to include while individual miners can only accept assigned work. Stratum V2 introduces encrypted communications, reduces bandwidth use and allows miners to build their own templates. This can reduce the risk of a small number of pools controlling transaction ordering and censorship, making the protocol important to mining efficiency, network security and decentralization.

On May 7, 2026, Foundry, AntPool, F2Pool, SpiderPool, Block Inc., MARA Foundation and DMND joined a working group to jointly develop an open-source standard. Together, they account for nearly 75% of global hashrate. Hashrate Index data showed Foundry at about 30% and AntPool at 17.7%. During the same period, miners’ daily hashprice was only about $36–$38 per PH/s, underscoring the urgency of reducing latency and costs.