TLDR: Check out this site that determines how much home mining it takes to dethrone the two companies that build most blocks.
The middle child of my Woody propaganda series
The Guitaxe got another big brother. While the little guy is great for learning, and his biggest brother hashes like a beast, the s9 version has a special super power. This space heater not only kills fascists, it's moving into my neighbor's garage. She's "always cold" and I'm always trying to foist my hashrate's power consumption on other people. It's a match made in heaven. Woot! This is my first American home mining deploy.
This got me thinking, how many garages will it take?
Hashrate Hearth
Foundry and the AntPool mafia currently build 58% of bitcoin's block templates. My new site explores how much home mining it will take to break that majority, and different ways we can get there.
The Skinny
First, you pick a goal and one machine and a gauge shows how many homes it takes to reach said goal. As of this writing, breaking the aforementioned majority takes 160 EH/s of new hashrate. That's 800k homes with an S21, 1.5 million with a used S19j Pro, 12 million with an S9... or 133 million with a Bitaxe. Only about 106 million people currently own bitcoin directly. There's also a slider for how much of that home fleet ends up in the US, because China's 2021 ban showed where the hashrate sits is relevant too.
You can flip the chart between coinbase tags and who builds the templates. By tag, it takes three pools to make a majority. But if you go by builder (b10c's research) it's two. A setup comparison shows who determines the transactions in each case.
Plug in your home scenario and you get a daily ledger. There are presets for winter heat on grid power, midday solar surplus, and hydronic heat + solar, plus credit to the folks boxing this stuff up for normal people like Canaan Avalon, Heatbit, Hashrate House and Exergy. (I believe that Heatbit is making a big announcement in about twenty minutes, btw)
I included a scenario to explore the hashrate exodus to AI. Props to @optimism for calling my attention to how this might actually create more consolidation though. Then I include some action steps, but if you read my posts regularly, there are no surprises there. :)
It has beautiful, sloppily vibe-coded ambience. Make sure to turn the sound on. You're welcome.
Plus, you don't get the steam effects when the sound is off. Those are the breaks.
Why
Last week, @Scoresby asked me a question with presuppositions that grated pretty harshly with my experience in the last few years:
What value do you see home miners bringing that industrial miners do not bring?
Around that same time, I had a call with a proprietary mining company about getting machines down to Mossel Bay. They were kind, generous people, not banal shitcoiners. Their advice, after hearing my whole rant on the value of decentralization and censorship resistance, was still to skip bitcoin and mine altcoins. They argued that home-friendly machines pay about the same and the pool converts payouts anyway. If Foundry and AntPool start with some funny business, they lose nothing. The family saving in bitcoin loses a ton.
So here's my answer. It's not the machine. It's which template is being hashed and who's holding the bitcoin. That's not charity. It's defending savings.
And this morning's news makes it pretty timely!
The HRF newsletter this morning just reported that Russia has announced that after July 2027, self custody is essentially banned for private citizens. That's coming from the country hosting about a sixth of global hashrate. Currently, those kind of rules get enforced at exchanges. When somebody decides to enforce on-chain, won't the cheapest place to do it be the handful of pools that build most block templates?
Prove me wrong (please!)
I'm still looking to lose this argument (that we have a mining pool centralization problem). In the meantime, let me know if your garage is getting chilly.
P.S. Russia announcement also inspired a whole new section in bitcoinisforcriminals.com. Updating it now.
The switch will flip rapidly as soon as there are plug-and-play devices that offer real energy savings.
I think we’re close to that with space heaters already and perhaps we just got a lot closer with water heaters.
I love that water heater idea. I just might pull the trigger on the element replacement posted today.
We have a gas water heater, so it'll take a bit more effort for us to switch over.
Me too. Hashrate House has one that goes beneath a gas water heater, but I don't really have the sats to buy one right now. He's a really cool guy though and I hope to get his model when I can.
Wow! That's awesome. We would need to have some electrical work done before I could hook it up, but it looks very promising.
When I put in the circuit for my s19s, I called up an electrician buddy for a quote. He said he'd do it for the joy of seeing me suffer doing the dirty work. Then he'd do the smart person stuff for free. Joke was on him! The dirty work turned out to be a friggin' blast! So, if you got any electrician buddies, check with them first. ;)
I have an electric heater in my little snow bird/mini mining farm down south. I need to take a break from remotely monitoring my solar power setup down there at some point!
Yeah, really! Pretty exciting stuff!
i got an avalon Q running in the living room, and nanoS' in each bedroom :) Keeps us from freezing at least hahah
Do you crank that Q all year, or just during the winter?
I live in the PNW so doesnt make sense in the summer. In the fall/winter/early spring, I basically have my thermostat set at 60 degrees, so if it gets really cold the furnace kicks on but otherwise the house is heated by the avalons.
Hell yeah!
What value do you see home miners bringing that industrial miners do not bring?
etc. etc.
1&2. Yes, unequivocally. I'd also add that they're more nibble at switching pools because they're less of a big, centralized target.
Great post! Realistically there is probably a better shot with around 500k lunatics like you and me.
Two down! 500k is significantly less than 1% of all bitcoiners. I imagine that many lunatics might be a realistic number...
The site is really fun! Great job. (But even more, I'm loving your adventures in making various bitcoin waste heat devices -- these are truly excellent.)
You bring up an interesting point for me: I don't think controlling template construction is part of the bitcoin threat model.
I am not yet convinced that control of the template is really that important.
I imagine an ultimate censor pool: >50% of hashrate mines blocks that are empty (except for their coinbase) and refuses to mine on top of anyone else's blocks. I think the Bitcoin response to such a situation is that users will have to increase the fees they offer miners for inclusion in transactions until hashrate defects from the censor.
It is highly unlikely any individual will be able to deploy enough hashrate to guarantee the inclusion of their own transactions. Rather, they hope to entice a large enough percentage of miners to include their transactions by offering juicy fees.
If the argument is that higher fees will not entice miners away from the censoring pool because such miners are ideologically motivated (ie owned by governments that want to censor), then, yes, this is a 51% attack, and it is a known vulnerability of bitcoin.
But, as far as I understood, the argument for why Bitcoin mining actually has a chance to remain decentralized is because energy is widely distributed around the world and so when bitcoin holders offer more btc in fees, there is a chance that more miners will come online (or switch pools because they are not under the jurisdiction of the censor).
I think it is a good thing that miners can build their own templates, but I don't think that is where the buck stops with censorship resistance. It seems to me that the fees users offer are the only real defense we have against a 51% attack.
My guess before reading: all of them.
@remindme in 24 hours