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- Jack Dorsey was the lead investor as Ocean raised $6.2 million to decentralize Bitcoin mining and provide more transparency at a time when centralized pools have taken over.
- With Ocean, miners get to receive Bitcoin directly from the BTC protocol, rather than waiting for the mining pool to distribute the rewards as happens with a majority of miners.
Jack Dorsey is renowned as one of the most vocal Bitcoin supporters since his days as the CEO of Twitter, which now goes by X. He is still working towards pushing for the crypto’s adoption and in his latest move, he was the lead investor in a $6.2 million funding round aimed at pushing the decentralization of BTC mining.
Mummolin Inc. announced this week that it had raised the seed funding from Dorsey, Barefoot Bitcoin Fund, MoonKite, Accomplice and other investors. The funding will go towards the launch of Ocean, a project that co-founder Luke Dashjr says will change BTC mining forever.
On November 28th, #Bitcoin mining will change forever.
Join @Jack Dorsey, @LukeDashjr, @GiacomoZucco, Bob Burnett @boomer_btc, and other prominent bitcoiners live to discuss the #FutureOfBitcoinMining.https://t.co/pvS6DN30TC
— OCEAN (@ocean_mining) November 20, 2023
Ocean is a non-custodial, permissionless and transparent mining pool that its founders believe will reshape the industry. Currently, pools receive the BTC reward and transaction fees from the network and take custody of it exclusively before later splitting among the miners.
This arrangement goes against the decentralized nature of the Bitcoin protocol. By taking the reward first, these pools could withhold it from the miners, either by legal requirement or if they are operated by scammers.
“OCEAN’s non-custodial payouts directly to miners from the block reward remove this risk and the pool’s undue influence over miners,” says President Mark Artymko.
Founder Dashjr has been in the Bitcoin space for over a decade and is one of the most respected and renowned voices in the sector. He has been a Bitcoin Core developer since 2011 where he has contributed to several bug fixes and feature improvements.
Dashjr described Ocean as “the most transparent pool and also the only non-custodial pool where miners are the recipients of new block rewards directly from Bitcoin.”
Unveiling Anti-Censorship Bitcoin Mining
A Bitcoin mining pool is a gathering of individual miners who pool their hash rate to improve their chances of obtaining the block rewards. Currently, Foundry USA is the largest pool, accounting for 19% of the BTC hash rate. Antpool at 17.4%, F2Pool at 15% and Binance Pool at 10.3% are the other major pools.
While recording new blocks and gaining the block reward is the key objective, mining pools have become critical players in the decision-making process in Bitcoin. They determine some decisions such as activating soft forks, and these decisions can dictate the future of the top crypto.
As such, decentralizing these pools is critical to securing the future of the king of crypto.
Dorsey, who now heads NYSE-listed fintech firm Block (formerly Square), commented:
OCEAN is solving a problem for Bitcoiners that I think all of us feel – further centralization of pools and mining pools that could plague Bitcoin, and how that risks a bunch of Bitcoin attributes that we hold dear.
