Seven top mining pools join Stratum V2 Working Group

Seven large bitcoin mining pools, Foundry, Antpool, F2pool, Spiderpool, Block Inc., MARA Foundation and DMND, joined the Stratum V2 Working Group on May 7, 2026 to advance deployment of Stratum V2, a protocol that allows miners to select transactions and build their own block templates while adding encryption and lower latency.

Stratum V2 was developed to replace Stratum V1, a push-based protocol introduced in 2012 that left pools in control of transaction selection, transmitted data in plaintext and exposed miners to hashrate hijacking and surveillance. The newer protocol implements end-to-end authenticated encryption, reduces pool bandwidth by roughly 60% and miner bandwidth by roughly 70%, and includes a Job Declaration sub-protocol that permits miners to construct and submit their own templates.

The Stratum V2 Working Group was founded by Braiins and Spiral in 2022 and has developed the protocol as a public, vendor-neutral specification. The group said the specification removes compatibility barriers and allows the ecosystem to focus on efficiency, privacy, security and miner autonomy.

Braiins published real-world tests showing miners running Stratum V2 natively can capture up to 7.4% higher profitability through faster template delivery, lower latency and improved fee capture. Braiins Pool and DMND are operating Stratum V2 in production; DMND began offering full miner-selected templates in 2025. Blitzpool runs Stratum V2 for solo miners and the reference implementation community pool continues testing.

Antpool CEO Andy Zhou described the company as “proud to support the broader adoption of Stratum V2,” adding that an open, interoperable standard lets operators work on efficiency, security and decentralization. Spiderpool CTO Kenway Wang highlighted that miner-constructed templates can be useful for operators with limited bandwidth.

The seven additions bring tens of exahashes per second of combined hashrate. That matters because roughly five pools control about 70% of global bitcoin hashpower and currently determine most block content. Foundry, Luxor and Antpool had previously tested or prepared infrastructure for Stratum V2.

Translation proxies allow Stratum V1 firmware to connect to V2 pools without hardware or firmware upgrades, lowering a barrier to adoption. The timing and practical impact for individual miners will depend on when large pools enable V2 access for their users and how quickly miners and manufacturers move to native V2 implementations.