6 posts
A reality check on Stratum V2 adoption. The protocol promised to return transaction selection to miners and break pool control over Bitcoin censorship. Years later, what's actually deployed, who's using job negotiation, and is the promise real or still aspirational?
Ethereum Foundation is testing 'DVT-lite' technology to simplify distributed validator setup, aiming for one-click deployment to reduce institutional barriers and improve network decentralization. Vitalik Buterin announced the foundation is staking 72,000 ETH using the simplified approach.
Bitcoin Core v30.0 introduced experimental Stratum V2 support in October 2025. Five months later, adoption remains slow despite the protocol's promise of better decentralization and censorship resistance.
Lightning was supposed to decentralize Bitcoin payments, but routing analysis shows LSPs and mega-nodes create censorship chokepoints. What decentralization actually looks like at the routing layer.
Foundry USA and AntPool now control nearly half of Bitcoin's hashrate. Stratum V2 and DATUM offer a way out, but will miners choose decentralization over convenience?
Jito's MEV infrastructure created Solana's worst client monoculture risk. Then Firedancer launched, and the problem fixed itself faster than Ethereum's did.