Bitcoin Pools Controlling 75% Hashrate Adopt Stratum V2, Shifting Block Control to Miners

On May 11, seven major Bitcoin mining pools—Foundry (34.2%), AntPool (14.2%), F2Pool (11.3%), SpiderPool (10.5%), MARA Pool (4.7%), Block Inc., and DMND—controlling 75% of global hashrate adopted Stratum V2, decentralizing block template construction to individual miners while adding encryption and cutting bandwidth by 60-70%. The development started May 9 with these pools joining the Stratum V2 working group amid tight miner economics: hashprice at $36-$38/PH/s/day, 15-20% unprofitable miners, and difficulty rising to 135.64T on May 15. May 10 commitments promised up to 7.4% profitability gains, marking a key efficiency milestone for Bitcoin's network resilience.