Stratum Fact Number 5:

Stratum is used by both mining devices (aka ASICs) and by pools. One really cool thing about Stratum V2 is even if you don’t upgrade the firmware on your device (so you run an ASIC that still uses Stratum V1), you can still connect to a Stratum V2 pool!

To do that you use something called the “Translation proxy”. This proxy also lets miners select the transactions in the block they are mining. 

We talk a lot about the centralization that comes from pools doing all the transaction selection. It turns out devices don’t necessarily need Stratum V2 firmware, they just need a Stratum V2 pool that supports Job Declaration! 

Source: page 15 of this report from Galaxy Digital by Rachel Rybarczyk https://docsend.com/view/szk48syby33q28zq