Stablecoin issuer Tether has announced it intends to deploy its existing and future Bitcoin hashrate to OCEAN’s Bitcoin mining pool in an effort to strengthen the network’s decentralization.
“Deploying hashrate to OCEAN aligns with both our mining investments and our broader mission to fortify Bitcoin against centralizing forces,” Tether’s CEO Paolo Ardoino said in an April 15 statement.
Source: OCEAN Mining
While Bitcoin hashrate is decentralized, the block-building process conducted by mining pools is mostly centralized by a few dominant actors — most notably Foundry USA, AntPool and ViaBTC.
The OCEAN protocol attempts to decentralize this process by empowering miners to build their own block templates using their open-source DATUM protocol, reducing dependency on centralized intermediaries and enhancing censorship resistance, Tether said.
Tether’s deployment would leverage OCEAN’s DATUM software across all of its mining operations worldwide, including in rural areas in Africa.
“By enabling on-site generation