According to Ocean, DATUM allows for greater control over individual miners’ transactions.
A user on X explained that the operation of DATUM “is a mystery.”
The new decentralized mining protocol, DATUM (in Spanish it means “Decentralized Alternative Templates for Universal Mining”), implemented by the pool Ocean mining since last September 29, 2024, has already successfully started processing blocks on the Bitcoin network.
Over the course of the last 2 weeks, the Ocean pool, since implementing its protocol DATUM managed to mine a total of 10 blocks on the network, according to data mempool.
The last month Ocean used the protocol Stratum V26 blocks were found. Therefore, as of mid-October, the success of the Ocean pool has increased almost 50%, although this increase does not imply that it is due to the transition to the DATUM protocol. As the protocol has only been in operation for two weeks, we have to wait to observe the performance of the pool with more precision with these new templates.
Ocean employs its new DATUM protocol to allow individual miners to have more control over transactions that are included in the blocks, this in order to prevent censorship and improve network security. According to wrote the user “The Mining Pod” in a thread of He pool mining does not intervene in this process.
Thus, DATUM would grant lower latency levels when transmitting blocks, by eliminating intermediaries. It would also offer users greater decentralization and greater control over their privacy. This increased privacy is because miners only share the Merkle branch of their transactions with the pool, not the entire transactions. The Merkle branch is a data structure that allows the integrity of a data set to be verified without revealing its contents.
To the eliminate dependency on a pool central to transmit the blocks, the risk of centralization is reduced and the decentralization of the network is strengthened. Additionally, because DATUM does not share complete transactions with a poolminers can better protect their privacy, as the Merkle branch does not reveal specific information about transactions.
The same user mentioned detailed that the information that Ocean currently offers about DATUM makes impossible the proper knowledge of this Bitcoin mining protocol. He also assured that its operation is “a mystery.”
Users on the X platform echoed the DATUM protocol
During the first two weeks of October, some X users posted information on their accounts about blocks found using DATUM in the pool Ocean.
For example, a developer working for mempool, under the public an image with block number 865706 found by user “Just for Bitcoin”.
In addition, the image contains the reward figure that that miner obtained for transaction fees, 0.063 BTC, which as of October 15 was equivalent to around 4,000 dollars. This reward should be added to the fixed reward (block subsidy) of 3,125 BTC, of this size after the halving bitcoin April 2024
Through the information provided by mempoolit can be corroborated that block 865706 mined on October 15 was one of the last three found by an Ocean user. That same day, two others were successfully prosecuted from the pool Ocean using DATUM.
Another user with the pseudonym Faisal went up an image to the social network showing block 864221, found by “Just for Krypto” on October 5. In this case, the reward was 0.02 BTC. Right now, with bitcoin trading in the $62,000 area, it can be estimated that that reward was equivalent to about $1,200 in transaction fees.
Another interesting fact about pool Ocean and its new DATUM protocol is that under the block found the name of the pool (Ocean) does not appear, but rather the name of the individual miner appears which, through the pool and with the new “universal mining” templates, works and processes blocks on the Bitcoin network.
Ocean expressed that the open source of this new protocol would be available on October 18, as reported by CriptoNoticias, although at the time of writing, from official accounts of the pool They have not disclosed anything on this point.
