Certainly it is not 100% decentralized. The word decentralized is often misused. Even Bitcoin is not 100% decentralized. But I believe in those who try their best to decentralize as much as possible with the existing resources. This will take a long time and may never be 100% decentralized.

Others have said something similar in this thread but I'll just reiterate: "decentralization" is a spectrum.

Not massively aware of what Ocean purport to be but in my estimation it's this.

I keep having this thought in my head. If everyone who lived in North or South of the tropics that uses a heater in winter used a miner to provide heat, how much of a dent would that put into the centralization of mining pools. I know I'm not the first to think that but the thought in itself illustrates the point. Pools form. It's healthy. But so is the fundamental human right to burn electricity with fiat.

Dont let perfect be the enemy of better 🤙

Its closed source. Pass.

Answering directly to your question: no, they're not decentralized. Answering with more context: no, they're not and they're doing exactly what some topics ago we were discussing or what Stratum v2 is really trying to resolve. If the first block they mined, they used filters¹ to prevent certain types of transactions THEY don't like. I'll assume their hashraters didn't like also.

In fact, it's funny how these things works, Luke Dash in the past put biblical verses without asking anyone and without pay. And now they want to filter with their OP_RETURN version. Come on, man.

From what I read, they don't claim to be decentralized, they simply are helping to decentralize mining.

I don't think you can have a truly 100% decentralized mining pool, as you would need someone to control the hardware for connectivity at a minimum.

Maybe some kind of P2P mining?

Here is great podcast episode by Stephan with a deep dive into "the" Ocean ;) https://stephanlivera.com/episode/528/

What next? Does it pass the howe test?

Is their aim to be a completely decentralized mining pool or to help further decentralize mining?

I bet Stratum V2 will have a bigger impact than Ocean in miners’ decentralization

they haven’t claimed that the pool is decentralized. The claim is that it helps bitcoin be more decentralized than it is now.

Someone on Nostr said that it's not decentralized at all, just faster payments. I asked what he would consider decentralized: ”When there's not a single centralized party that controls everything about block building and payouts”.

Would everyone agree that these are criteria for decentralized mining pools?

Not sure.

But i will say that we're seeing more hash rate pointed towards ocean. I guess that will continue this week, but it will be interesting to see how much the market values this model over their profits.

Hope they add braidpool - https://github.com/braidpool/braidpool

(more) decentralized than fully centralized :)

As of right now it's not decentralized. Future promise it's it will be (?). I recommend you talk to Luke and WK directly in their IRC channel @ irc.freenode.net #OCEAN

Given the current mining scene dominated by shitcoiners and grifters, this could be the best we have. I mined with braiins until they decided to toss us out to the lions.

I wouldn't say decentralized, but strictly talking, to add a new pool is a contribution to widen te distribution of hashrate (as long as they are succsesful recruiting miners), the most interesting to see from my pow is what they call phase 2. All the rest looks quite similar, like payment thresholds, custody while it is achieved (an escrow would have been nicer)> It's going to be interesting to see how they evolve, but a new pool with different model is always good

decentralized is such a bastardised term, what does it mean? What is meaningfully decentralised? OCEAN just gives individual miners more autonomy and to do tasks that were originally part of being a miner but was outsource to pools

might be a step in the right direction.

I think they claim to increase decentralization, not to "be" decentralized

The term "decentralized" can be nuanced. While Ocean offers individual miners direct payouts, the presence of a core team managing operations and intervention for low threshold payments may raise questions on its complete decentralization. This hybrid model blurs the line between centralized and decentralized structures.

Not more than any other mining pool tbh

I suppose time will tell.