ViaBTC, the largest identified pool, has mined 25% of the blocks in the last few days. In Bitcoin, only 5.2% of the blocks mined in recent days correspond to unidentified miners.
Unknown, or unidentified, miners have control over most of the processing power on the Bitcoin SV network. Data from the Bitcoin SV blockchain, available on the Coin Dance site, reflect this.
According to that platform, unidentified groups solved more than 52% of the blocks mined between March 24th and 25th on that network. Among the recognized pools, which solved just over 25% of the blocks at the same period of time, the main one on the network is ViaBTC.
The activity on the network, according to Coin Dance, shows that the percentage of blocks mined by “other pools” is growing. Between March 18th and 25th, unidentified miners mined up to 54.2% of the blocks created on the Bitcoin SV blockchain. At that time, the contribution from ViaBTC was 22.2%.
When reviewing the hash rate graph, it is possible to see that the combined processing power of Bitcoin SV miners is almost 3,000 PH/s or 3 EH/s. Between March 18th and 25th, data from Coin Dance indicated that 1,687 PH/s belong to groups of unknown miners.
Bitcoin SV is a creation of Craig S. Wright, the Australian businessman that claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s creator. Bitcoin SV resulted from a fork of the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, which in turn had forked from the original Bitcoin chain.
Comparison with Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash
The percentage of unidentified pools in both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash is considerably lower than in Bitcoin SV. In the first two cases, the percentage reaches just over 5%.
Regarding Bitcoin Cash, this occurs according to the records of the last 24 hours. However, an extension of the range to 7 days allows seeing unknown pools only mined 2.8% of the blocks. In the case of Bitcoin, the 7-day graph shows 5.2%, while the percentage is 2.08% for the last 24 hours.
The centralization of processing power on networks that use Proof of Work (PoW) causes concerns. Among them are the vulnerability to 51% attacks and the power to reverse transactions or perform forks arbitrarily. No one knows whether the domain belongs to a single Bitcoin SV mining organization or multiple unidentified groups.
The truth is that, according to records from Coin Dance itself, it is not the first time that unknown pools have controlled the processing power of the network. For example, in the second week of January, there were levels close to the current ones.
According to data of June 2019, Coin Dance indicates that unknown groups approached 50%. Closer to the beginnings of the network, it occurred on several occasions, showing peaks above even 80%.
Concerning the future of the network, it is just over two weeks until the reduction of mining rewards in Bitcoin SV. That halving will allow each block solved in Bitcoin SV to create 6.25 BSV, in contrast to the 12.5 BSV that each mined block currently creates.
By Willmen Blanco
