Company Name: request
Founder: Alejandro de la Torre and Filippo Merli
Establishment date: 2023
Head office location: Lisbon, Portugal and Florence, Italy
Amount of Bitcoin in the Treasury: “Currently bootstrapping”
Number of employees: 2
Website: https://www.dmnd.work/
Public or private? private
Alejandro de la Torre is deeply concerned that Bitcoin mining is too centralized, and is on a mission to change that.This is why he started requesta Bitcoin mining pool that puts power back into the hands of independent Bitcoin miners.
However, before we get into how DEMAND works, it is important to understand what Mr. de la Torre learned from his time in the Bitcoin mining industry to better understand his motivations for starting DEMAND .
Delatorre’s history in the Bitcoin mining field
Mr. de la Torre serves as vice president. Poulinone of the world’s largest Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining pools, and Vice President of Business Operations. BTC.com, which also operated its own Bitcoin mining pool. What he saw while playing these two roles was that he had little time to waste in decentralizing his Bitcoin mining environment.
“From our experience with the last pool, we realized that the mining pool industry needed a change, and it needed to happen very quickly,” Delatorre told Bitcoin Magazine. “There is a very clear problem with the centralization of mining pools today, and I was able to pinpoint that problem while working at BTC.com and Poolin.”
De la Torre went on to say that a number of Bitcoin mining pools are now proxies for larger pools, although he did not mention their names ( Antpool), explained that such centralization has the power to seriously damage Bitcoin.
“The anchor pool is now close to 50% of the network. This allows for a 51% attack on the network, which would be catastrophic,” de la Torre said.
“I don’t think they’ll do it, but it’s a possibility. That’s already a big red flag,” he added.
De la Torre also pointed out that this level of centralization poses risks when it comes to network censorship, saying it would not be difficult for this major pool to censor half of the transactions on the Bitcoin network. emphasized.
Censorship and the possibility of a 51% attack are “very clear dangers that currently exist with Bitcoin,” de la Torre said.
Power to solo miners
In response, Mr. de la Torre and his business partner, Filippo Merli, Start demand pool It aims to put power back in the hands of private miners in November 2023.
DEMAND is the world’s first Stratum V2 mining pool. Stratum V2 is an open source messaging protocol that allows miners and pools to communicate directly with each other, reducing mining infrastructure requirements compared to previous versions and allowing solo miners to create their own mining templates. You will be able to choose.
“Today’s pools are responsible for building blocks and adding transactions to blocks,” de la Torre said. “With Stratum V2 and DEMAND, miners themselves will be able to build blocks and add the transactions they want.”
Currently, most filtering for mining pools is done at the pool level rather than at the individual miner level. De La Torre understands that miners want more control over the types of transactions they include in blocks, especially with the introduction of protocols like his Ordinals and Runes. And Mr. de la Torre believes miners should have this power to promote the spirit of decentralization. It also added that DEMAND will accept all blocks submitted to the pool.
“This weakens my power. That’s what I want. I don’t want power. I’ve exhausted that power,” said Delatorre. “I’ve experienced it before, too, but it has a lot of power in the hands of too few people. And it’s not Bitcoin itself. Bitcoin is decentralization; This is pushing it even further.”
Solo minor encouragement
Mr. de la Torre recognizes that the odds of mining a block are against a small solo miner, but he believes that finding a block should not be a challenge, and that solo It also created another way to incentivize miners to participate online.
“You need to heat your house during the winter, right? Why not use your Bitcoin miner as a heater?” Delatorre said.
“As luck would have it, I just hit a block and my wife was very happy,” he added with a laugh.
Solo miners participating in DEMAND Pool also have the option to sell the hashrate they generate on the marketplace, ensuring that they receive income commensurate with their efforts. DEMAND signs agreement with Hash Rate Marketplace strict We plan to establish more partnerships.
Mr. de la Torre also touched on how DEMAND payments will be made through the PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Share) system. In PPLNS, profits are allocated based on the number of blocks a mining pool mines in his day, and payouts vary based on the pool’s luck with mining blocks.
This system is different from the FPPS (Full Pay Per Share) system commonly used by major mining pools. In FPPS, mining service fees and block rewards are settled based on theoretical profits, and miners receive rewards regardless of whether the pool finds a block or not.
De la Torre acknowledges that getting consistently paid in FPPS may sound appealing to miners, but payments through both PPLNS and FPPS are not comparable in the long run. I was quick to point it out.
“A lot of people have misconceptions about PPLNS,” de la Torre said.
“With FPPS, you get recurring payments, so that’s fine. I see why miners would find FPPS. However, over a long enough period of time, the average value of PPLNS will be about the same,” he added. Ta.
“Yes, there will be no recurring payments, but there will be imprecise payments depending on the hash rate of DEMAND. And we intend to have enough. You will continue to receive constant payments. You get about the same amount on average otherwise. So there’s no real downside.”
De la Torre also pointed out that solo mining as part of a DEMAND pool is one of the best ways for Bitcoin enthusiasts to obtain non-KYC Bitcoin.
He also highlighted the fact that bringing solo miners online does something else that is important to keeping Bitcoin decentralized: more nodes come online.
sending node
To use DEMAND’s block templates, miners must run their own nodes. This means that solo miners not only contribute to decentralizing Bitcoin’s hashrate, but also to decentralizing its governance.
“We not only want the solo and home mining communities to thrive and make more money, but we also want node adoption,” de la Torre said.
“Solo miners provide hashrate to secure the network, potentially produce Bitcoin, and also help maintain Bitcoin core and any Bitcoin clients they desire. Nodes are good for the health of the system. “It’s a thing,” he added.
For the future
De la Torre also said that DEMAND is currently working on expanding its services to pool mining and is actively looking for miners to participate.
He vowed to make DEMAND a “stable, reliable pool with transparent payments” and to distinguish it from other “black box” pools.
Mr. de la Torre seems to be doing everything he can to bring more independent miners online, a clear tone in his voice as he explains his plans for Demand in a conversation with me. There was a sense of urgency.
“The centralization of Bitcoin mining pools has become a very serious problem, and it is up to us as a mining community to do something about it,” Delatorre said. “It won’t be good if you don’t.”
