Oddbean

Bitcoin mining pools should issue rewards in ecash so that participants can mine without an account and remain private. Miners can withdraw their ecash balance to Lightning or on-chain whenever they feel like it. Nobody needs to know who you are and how much you've earned while mining. This is more important than most people realize.

It gets better. If the pool uses PPLNS payouts they can issues ecash tokens for each hashrate share. These tokens have indeterminate value until the next block is mined. When the pool finds a block the value of the tokens is discovered. This forms a natural boundary to rotate the ecash privkeys and start a new epoch. Once the epoch is fully cleared the pool can publish proof of reserves exactly like your proposal. Mining payouts are 100% private, transparent, and verifiable. But wait, it gets better! Miners can sell their hashrate tokens immediately to buyers who value on-chain privacy. The buyers get a fresh KYC-free coinbase output. Miners get compensated for the privacy premium of mining rewards. But wait, it gets better! The pool can also auction off the rare sat at the beginning of the coinbase using sighash anyonecanpay. The auction proceeds flow directly into the coinbase, allowing all miners to profit from the rare sat premium. You don't have to believe in ordinals to profit from them. Again 100% private, transparent, and verifiable to the whole world. I can't stop thinking about this idea. DM me if you want to help build it.

These wheels are always turning. https://image.nostr.build/a23d3a2fecc2cc35f7768feb057908f5590b077939f21f7d2f889661c28c1440.gif Can we do better? Could do Sv2, BOLT12, fedimint for improved security, privacy, and distributed trust. I don't know how the BYO block template would work, though. Not deep enough on Sv2 yet.

I suppose the big mining pools are afraid of upsetting the government, so they are less likely to implement things like this. Hopefully, this means they are going to lose out to more decentralized options.

Definitely, #privacy matters! nostr:nevent1qqsrm0hvz30umzrkxpqf0raaz9487sanlap6e4yntzqg2y2hqrp0s3sprpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezumtpwdek6atc9e3k7mf0qgs9pk20ctv9srrg9vr354p03v0rrgsqkpggh2u45va77zz4mu5p6ccrqsqqqqqprs2yl3

I think miner privacy is an extremely important subject. Someone should try this approach and evaluate its merit. If any pool operator is willing to explore this idea, I'm happy to help them implement it. Hit me up. My DMs are open (here, Telegram, Matrix, see bio). nostr:note18klwc9zleky8vvzqj78m6yt20apm8l6r4n2fxkyqs5g4wqxzlprqpwhve2

Braiins pool just enabled lightning withdrawals for everyone. I was able to withdraw (less than the usual payout threshold) to my ecash/nostr powered minibits.cash address! This Ecash wallet is already improving the overall experience for this super small scale home miner! Where it might take years to hit the normal payout threshold with a few winter-only space heaters. https://image.nostr.build/0f9a28a1f666b10afd06a13a6d0fd63e441938b26d281eb0fc8270e6b5b5efd2.jpg