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Mark. Hey. Welcome back to Bitcoin Park. You were here at the Texas Energy Mining Summit.

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Yep, I was. The first one. And you were also last week at the Proto launch.

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Yes. How was that? Oh, that was wild. Yeah?

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Yeah, it was incredible. Lots of amazing things happening on the hardware side. And I think it's

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going to be a step change for how manufacturers approach mining.

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well that was some big news square's launch of the the proto rig and software to helping

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decentralize mining you guys have been hard at work at ocean decentralizing mining so joined

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today by mark artemco who's the co-founder and president of ocean mining which is a mining pool

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but before we get into the specifics of the pool business of what you guys are doing at ocean

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You have a long background in engineering and specifically grid systems and engineering systems to interconnect large loads to power grids completely prior to any of your work on Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining.

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Just talk a little bit about your background and how you think about Bitcoin as a power consumer within the broader energy system.

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Yeah. So my my pre Bitcoin life dates back to 2004 ish. So I spent about two decades pre Bitcoin working in the utility industry in Canada and then in the United States up in Michigan.

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But I'm an electrical power systems engineer by training, and I basically cut my teeth in the design and engineering aspect of the power system, doing everything from single line diagrams and electrical arrangement, essentially building the blueprints for what a substation and a transmission line look like at the utility level.

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mainly high voltage networks so anything higher than 115 kilovolts which is what most bitcoin

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miners would tap into basically worked different capacities you know rose the ranks in those

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utilities to senior leadership roles and did everything from designing the designing the

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grid the substations building them multiple hundred million dollar projects as well and then

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finally operating them. And I actually, one of my probably favorite positions in that whole

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two decade period was spending a couple of years on shift at the 24 seven control room where we

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managed the power system for all of Ontario. So about 20,000 megawatts worth of energy

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flowing in and out and through various interconnections with the United States

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and different provinces in Canada and serving load and just being part of that, the machine,

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which most people don't realize, but the electrical system is literally one big machine

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that spans all the way from, you know, across in different interconnections.

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But the continent essentially is one huge machine and everything's interconnected.

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So through that time, I really got a very deep level of familiarity and experience building and operating the systems.

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But then finally, really realizing how it ultimately impacts the end user, which in the utility system, the end users are called loads.

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So it's not very customer friendly, but loads are, you know, any Bitcoin miner listening, if, you know, in the halls of the utility,

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They, you know, you're referred to as a load, 100 megawatt load, 50 megawatt load.

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But just knowing being part of the connection process from the utility side is, is it's just so it's so involved.

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And there's so many studies and to essentially make the entire grid work and continue working without error for for every additional load that joins and for every additional generator that joins.

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So it's kind of like operating on or maintaining an airplane mid-flight and never landing.

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So that's what the utilities do, either by adding new elements onto the grid or maintaining old ones.

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And so the majority of my professional career has been in the utility space.

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So I'm always looking at things from that angle.

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And I spent about 20 years serving loads like Bitcoin miners.

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And now I'm on the other side of the fence.

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And now I get to not necessarily, I'm not involved with the connection aspects running

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a mining pool, but I know the kinds of challenges that miners are facing when they're connecting

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to the grid and looking for capacity and dealing with outages.

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so um i like to think it gives me a good perspective yeah for sure what what time

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period was that that you were working the power industry yeah so that was like early 2000 so

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priests pre satoshi 2004 to you know about about five years ago so um so just a few years prior to

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co-founding Ocean.

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Yeah, yeah.

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So after going through the utility stint

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at a couple of different companies,

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I jumped into a Bitcoin mining startup

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based out of Michigan.

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And I did that for a couple of years.

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Rode the price down all the way to $16,000.

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An actual miner, like a proprietary miner?

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Yeah, it was a small outfit doing Bitcoin mining.

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And this is like...

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This is the truth podcast.

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So I did other things as well.

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I was involved in some other cryptocurrency mining and different things.

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And as this was part of my exploration into Bitcoin and through that process, I became a Bitcoin maxi.

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But my door into Bitcoin maximalism was through different colors.

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You know, people call us purists, but, you know, people take their own journey.

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It just matters where you end on the, from a destination perspective.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Mine was more, I don't know if you guys listened to Giacomo, but my, I was drawn, I was drawn

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into that blockchain technology thing first.

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And, uh, I dabbled in number of different consensus protocols.

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Um, mining was one of them and, and there was some other stuff as well, but that didn't

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last long.

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Um, and that kind of like, that's sort of where Luke enters the picture because he was, he

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was instrumental in sort of my conversion over into bitcoin maxi land before we get into to that

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one of the things that i've come to appreciate about particularly the the grid and power systems

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but also you know more broadly in that energy systems of you know the upstream complexities is

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that not until i really got into bitcoin and understanding the power aspects of it did

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I really understand the complexities of power that everyone takes for granted and everyone who has working money generally takes it for granted because it's always just worked. And the same is true of power, but it's a highly complex system.

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from the perspective now that you have

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as it relates to Bitcoin mining

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and looking back on the power industry

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and saying you worked in that 24-7 control room

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where loads and generation are constantly being balanced

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and either loads are coming on or coming off.

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How do you see Bitcoin solving a problem,

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specifically the flexibility of its load?

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well the the thing i think most people take for granted is 60 hertz like the lights aren't

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flickering right now everything's running you plug something into the wall it just works and

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that means that the electricity the voltage specifically is oscillating 60 times a second

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up and down, up and down, up and down.

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And if you add a large load, it gets slower.

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It's less than 60 hertz.

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If you add a generator or you triple load, it gets higher.

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It's above 60 hertz.

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And if you change the frequency, you're going to damage machines.

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And behind the curtain, behind the scenes,

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there are thousands of operators looking at predictive tools

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and signals like ACE, area control error, where ACE is a measurement.

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It's like a leading indicator to frequency.

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And if ACE is going in a certain direction, that triggers the system operators to do something,

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take some type of corrective action.

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And so the complexity behind the scenes is just, it's mind boggling how much is actually happening.

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Right now, as we sit here today, it's happening.

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And it's a system that never shuts off.

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Traditionally, system operators have had usually only generators at their disposal to manage the load.

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And frequency can change due to load coming on during the day when everybody's waking up and plugging in their coffee machines and the different patterns that happen throughout the day.

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And so there's response to that.

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And then there's response to outages if a generator trips offline.

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And traditionally, system operators have only had generators at their disposal to increase the output of the generator to help respond to frequency.

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And so you'll have some generators on spinning reserve and responding to signals from the market.

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And then you have more drastic measures like if if there's an outage, you know, every region is responsible to maintain its own frequency.

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And if it can, it has to procure it from neighboring regions.

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So a lot of a lot of region or all the regions will have some like peak replants and stuff that will can be fired up within a few minutes of an outage.

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And so you have regions have responsibility to get back to where they need to be.

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And and then in extreme scenarios, you don't have enough generation.

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You got to start you do things like voltage reduction, for example, you know, reducing everybody's voltage by five percent or three percent.

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Power is voltage times current.

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So you reduce the voltage, you reduce the power, you reduce the energy.

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So that's one way of dealing with shortfalls.

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nobody wants that because you see you see brownouts and you see your light stem

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and then the the worst scenario is and nobody ever wants to go there but all system operators

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train for it is rotational load shedding where you take a substation that has low voltage feeders

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and you just pop the breakers one by one by one either manually or you do it in an automated

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sequence everybody shares a bit of the downtime and that's like there's not enough electricity

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to go around. The golden rule is frequency can never go below. You know, we're talking like 59.5

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Hertz is devastating. We're not like, this is not 55 Hertz territory. We're talking like

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fractions of a Hertz can totally lead to cascading blackouts. So what do you do? Last

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worst case scenario, you tripped the load. So for the first time ever, you now have a load that says,

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hey, you can trip me off. I don't care. I'll do it if I'll save some money. And I tell everybody I

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meet that utilities have been searching the world for a load profile that doesn't care if it has

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dual supply. It doesn't care really about anything. It's rugged, it's durable, it's resilient. And

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And utilities are like they're always looking for technologies to help ride through those bumps, whether it's battery storage or pump storage or solar.

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So having a load looking kind of like flipping the problem on its head and instead of looking at generation as a solution, look at shutting load off as a solution.

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Right.

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So this is a paradigm shift in the utility industry.

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It was like unfathomable to suggest actively taking load off the grid as as like a first level response is just a new way of thinking.

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And so a lot of utilities out there, I'm friends with a lot of my well, I'm still friends with my old co-workers who are now, you know, gone on to various high level positions at utilities.

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And the knowledge of Bitcoin is is growing, but it's not there.

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And the knowledge of what Bitcoin mining can do and can be as an asset to the grid is still, I think we still have a huge opportunity to do some education.

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But I see it as God's gift.

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Bitcoin mining, I see as God's gift to utility operators because it's another tool in their toolkit that actually works much better.

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And it's very economical.

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yeah from my vantage point the there's the question for operators it's like hey if all

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these things are true that would be amazing but the question of is it true of like hey will these

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miners actually respond this way and then needing to have some grounding in in the actual source of

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demand to know that it's reliable and sustainable such that it will actually be there on the grid

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if they build a strategy around it to come off.

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You know, and I don't, you know, one of the things I'll do as part of this podcast is

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learn more about other regions.

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But in Texas, we have real time pricing and a deregulated energy market.

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And so the price signals are, you know, particularly in those periods that you described, if there's

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scarcity events. That's when power is most expensive and Bitcoin miners are this perfectly

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economic consumer of power that they're not refining it further down the line. And they

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have every incentive to shut off in those periods. And so I agree, there's a lot of education to go,

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but that it's kind of understanding why it exists in the way that it's flexible, but also that it

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will be there, but that if you start to grok that, then it's like, well, hey, the more of this

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that's on, the more impactful, you know, it can be as a lever. The last question I'll ask about

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the power side before we shift to ocean Do you have a perspective on given the nature of Bitcoin mining whether it will you know at least what on the grid whether it will gravitate to being co with generation like not necessarily

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saying like are the power companies going to be bitcoin miners but just in terms of physical

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location is there a benefit in terms of cost as well as the operation of the grid system

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to be um co-located next to a generator i think that yeah there's a huge benefit like the um

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A lot of the power that's generated, well, a lot of times generation is done at where the source of the energy is.

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If it's hydroelectric, for example, or you have like a big wind farm in the middle of the plains.

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And transmission was, it's a really prominent part of the grid.

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And it costs money to move the electricity from the generation to the load centers because it's not common for to have like a subdivision next to a nuclear power plant.

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So it's very expensive to move the power.

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And there's also you lose some of the energy due to line losses.

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and um so being able to completely collapse that distance and put the load next to the generator

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it saves all that capital expense and um uh and and you and it's more efficient because you you

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lower the line losses or you've reduced you eliminate them so you're behind the meter

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Kind of the same way or the inverse way that DERs transformed the renewable space, distributed energy resources.

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So rooftop solar, you know, micro grids, like any kind of like localized generation.

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It changed the traditional model where generation was happening over here.

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Consumption was here.

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And then you had to step up the voltage, send it 500 miles and then use it.

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And with DERs, you generated it locally and it became more efficient.

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And so that spawned a whole area of development and research in microgrids, for example.

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Bitcoin mining is like, it enables the opposite to occur.

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You just pick up the load and put it where the generation is.

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And so that has a lot of cost savings.

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But I think utilities can use it strategically as a way to enable projects and generators can use it strategically to enable the deployment of sites.

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If I think, if I'm not mistaken, probably the biggest limiting factor in bringing on a large generator is not building the generator.

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It's building the transmission line to accept the load because transmission lines are going through like your backyard and my backyard.

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And it takes a long time to get those environmental permits and approvals.

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And so you have the potential to generate, but no lines to generate it onto.

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And so you don't. And then now you have this opportunity cost. Somebody sunk $100 million into a generator that's doing nothing. So Bitcoin mining can actually enable whoever owns that to liven it up quicker, start making money until the lines are there and ready to accept the power.

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So I see mining as kind of like an enabler of that.

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And it's kind of what Gridless is doing in Africa by building up mining to enable the build out of the local community distribution networks.

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And I was in Tokyo last year with Luke and we visited Agile Energy X.

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It's a subsidiary of TEPCO, Tokyo Power.

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And they're doing that. They have like pockets of Bitcoin mining all around their region because they either have too much energy and no lines to put it on.

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So they just, well, let's mine Bitcoin with it. Or the Bitcoin mining was actually solving a congestion issue that they had.

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Interesting. That's a generator in Tokyo? Or in Japan?

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Yeah, so it's a subsidiary of Tokyo Electric Power Corp, TEPCO.

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Their subsidiary is called Agile Energy X.

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Kenji Tateiwa, if you're listening, shout out.

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But he's doing great.

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You need to get that guy in here.

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He's got a degree in nuclear engineering, so it's going to be a deep discussion.

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Yeah, you're going to have to make the introduction.

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Yeah, okay.

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All right, well, we could do a whole episode on power, and we might have to do one.

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but one of the things that's another key theme of the podcast which is what you know really what

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you guys are um you know as a principal foundation of oceans project i'd say is mining centralization

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and decentralizing mining and on past episodes we've we've talked at a high level about kind

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centralization and hardware and centralization and pools.

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And at the top,

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we talked about the release last week from square on the hardware side,

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you guys,

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um,

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or ocean had a predecessor,

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but ocean,

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you co-founded it with Luke dash jr.

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In 2023,

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just talk about like why you're,

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you're building ocean,

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like how you see the landscape of mining,

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how you see the effort that you're working on through ocean,

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helping to decentralize it, but really that initial inspiration for why work on this,

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why spend your time working on ocean? Yeah. Um, like Luke has always, he's always worked his whole

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like life's work is about protecting Bitcoin and making it better and more resilient and able to,

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to be here for the next thousand years. And so there's always, there's always, um,

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threats to this, to a new system and Bitcoin is no different. And when Luke and I were going into

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business together, the, the, um, like the foremost issue that was a concern to both of us was

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centralization of mining at the pool level. And, um, and, and that it was not like, it wasn't

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like a highly talked about topic and the general consensus at the time around bitcoin circles was

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that bitcoin mining was decentralized because you had hash rate all over the world and there's no

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problem but um if if you look at it from the anatomy of of mining and like what mining actually

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entails, it actually looked a lot scarier.

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And if you kind of unpacked mining is not just the, running the ASIC is one component

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of mining, and it's the last component of mining.

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But right from the early days of Bitcoin, mining was built to be creative.

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It has creative components and brute force components.

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And the creative component of mining was entailed building a local mempool, running a full node, first and foremost, running a full node, building a local mempool, building a block of transactions from your local mempool, and then turning that into a block template and giving that block template to your ASICs.

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And you could see in that, if you look at it from the functional perspective, the Bitcoin miner had complete sovereign control over their node and complete sovereign control over what went into their block and what they eventually mined.

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and um and this is what it was like in the early days of of mining i wasn't around back then but

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for whoever was you ran you ran the bitcoin client and there was a button and it said get bitcoins

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and with that feature turned on you would actually be making a block template unique to you

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complete complete diversity from anybody else's block template providing your own hash power

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And so the whole concept of decentralized mining in those early days was thousands of miners all around the world.

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Thousands at the time, miners and node runners were synonymous.

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And censorship was impossible.

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It was a joke.

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Like, you can't.

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You couldn't censor.

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But since mining pools came onto the scene to essentially solve for cash flow, right?

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Difficulty was increasing.

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Miners needed to get paid.

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volatility variance was a real thing. So miners grouped the hash rate together to solve for this

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cash flow need, but in the process outsourced the intelligent parts of mining to the pool operator.

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And that happened pretty quickly in the beginning and it's only gotten worse. And we sit here today

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and the majority of blocks found on the network are found essentially by two different entities.

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They operate under different names on the surface, but behind the scenes, it's really just two entities.

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So hashrate is spread across many countries around the world, but everybody's getting their blueprints from the same two CEOs.

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Like that's that's not a decentralized Bitcoin.

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And Luke believed that Bitcoin survival requires that we we change that.

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And so we set out essentially launching Ocean to build the tools to allow miners to take back control of that very important intelligent part of mining by building their own block templates.

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And pre-Ocean, pre-Datum, the tools just, you know, weren't readily accessible.

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And the know-how on the miner side wasn't there also.

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So, so, um, it's as much an educational thing as it is a product.

257
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Yeah, for sure.

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I talked to a lot of miners and just the energy side and facility side requires so much time

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and energy that then thinking about things that exist outside of that is, uh, I think,

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you know, again, one of the important parts of education about why it's important, you

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know, to the, to the people that are out there hashing.

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But if I understand it correctly, then were you and Luke discussing different business ideas and talking about like where was most important to work within Bitcoin and then gravitating to pools and pool centralization?

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Is that kind of?

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Yeah, we became friends through a pretty cool turn of events and not turn of events, but just introductions.

265
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And, yeah, we we we wanted to we know we wanted to work together and go into business.

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And essentially it was all right.

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Like we found the right people and we started looking into Bitcoin and where where our respective talents could be best used and put to good use.

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And and what areas of Bitcoin needed the most attention at the time.

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So it didn't take long to look at the mining space.

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And I had a very brief background in mining, but a huge energy background before then.

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And Luke practically wrote most of the code in the mining ecosystem from the early days.

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So it kind of quickly emerged as the obvious choice.

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And part of that was the fact that Luke had operated the Eligius mining pool from 2011 until 2017.

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and I think he kept that sort of on the back burner,

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ready to go in case Bitcoin ever needed it again.

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But back in those days, he ran it as a hobby pool,

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zero fees with one other guy, Jason Hughes,

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who's on our team now.

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Miner's familiar with him back then.

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He went by WSKIV, WK057.

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But no, that emerged as like the obvious choice

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and the thing we needed to do.

283
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And it didn't take us long to come to that conclusion.

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And then we basically set up a company real quick and we put together a team of people that we felt could get the job done.

285
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And we've been slowly growing on the personnel side, but rapidly growing on the products and the hash rate side ever since.

286
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So before we get into the specifics of Ocean, how do you think about the pool function today or in general within the Bitcoin mining supply chain in terms of the important parts of specialization that have naturally caused setting variance and payout structures aside, the core functions that pools provide?

287
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to miners well looking at the most simplest simplistic role of a pool it's to solve for

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cash flow it's to provide a mechanism for miners to come together group their hash rate and and

289
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essentially share the variance that that was that's why pools existed that's that's why

290
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we created allegiance and and all the early pools started was a collective effort to to help

291
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everybody mine and get paid and not wait around for 80 years to hit a block.

292
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And over the years, the pools have turned, the modern pool, the FPPS pool, prototypical

293
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pool has become like a Swiss army knife of products.

294
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And it ranges from variance reduction to insurance, guaranteeing payouts and, you know, financial

295
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products and derivatives and financing for, for miners and pools of kind of like the FP,

296
00:29:51,225 --> 00:29:57,945
the typical FPPS pool is I think grown in scope far beyond what, what a pool really should be.

297
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And, and I'm not sure really what caused that and whether it was a demand like, you know, this,

298
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the, I, I, when you mentioned before the complexity of running a modern mining operation, I get it.

299
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Like I spent boots on the ground years building sites and, um, and miners are sitting there

300
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worrying about, you know, equipment fans, ASIC fans breaking and transformers overheating

301
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and rising power prices.

302
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And so the complexity of, oh, let's, let's build a node and like they have the capacity,

303
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but it's, it hasn't, there are so many other worries to do.

304
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And and so kind of outsourcing all that to the pool,

305
00:30:39,545 --> 00:30:54,090
I think it just kind of like happened very naturally but the pendulum has swung so far to the other degree where pools are in a position of power right now They are the power players in the mining space

306
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They dictate what goes in the chain and what doesn't go in the chain.

307
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And it's a far, far away from where we started.

308
00:31:03,070 --> 00:31:10,570
Yeah, I think that one of the things that I talked about in the last episode with Phil Geiger is that over time,

309
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as Bitcoin grows over long time horizons,

310
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Bitcoin scales,

311
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everything should naturally decentralize.

312
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And if I were to have gone back five years ago or seven years ago,

313
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and I've only been paying attention to Bitcoin for nine years,

314
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that there's probably a natural limiting factor in terms of the number of

315
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pools,

316
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but that

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I would have expected

318
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increasingly

319
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increasing decentralization versus what has actually

320
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happened from the pool's landscape

321
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of essentially consolidation

322
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and centralization

323
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and again

324
00:31:58,310 --> 00:32:01,810
there's a saying that everything's good for Bitcoin

325
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and there are economic incentives and people will follow

326
00:32:03,750 --> 00:32:04,990
those economic incentives and so

327
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I'm confident over the long time horizon

328
00:32:07,890 --> 00:32:11,330
and that that will be true, but it will only be because of people like yourself

329
00:32:11,330 --> 00:32:17,550
building the competitive solutions that deliver a differentiated value.

330
00:32:18,990 --> 00:32:26,750
But in the current state, if minor centralization at the poolside were to be a risk

331
00:32:26,750 --> 00:32:33,130
in terms of materializing, how do you see that happening?

332
00:32:33,130 --> 00:32:40,850
like in terms of like is it the 51% attack is it the censorship is it changes to bitcoin

333
00:32:40,850 --> 00:32:47,770
like what like just your own your own perspective on it's like hey centralization is a problem but

334
00:32:47,770 --> 00:32:53,690
if it materialized to actually harm the network or harm the incentives or harm the interest of

335
00:32:53,690 --> 00:33:00,410
the individual miners that were pointing to these large pools of hash rate you know how do you see

336
00:33:00,410 --> 00:33:02,070
Like, where do you see the most material risk?

337
00:33:04,510 --> 00:33:07,230
Well, it's, we're sitting here and like,

338
00:33:07,370 --> 00:33:10,170
your question reminded me of one of Luke's,

339
00:33:10,310 --> 00:33:11,830
one of my favorite sayings from Luke,

340
00:33:11,930 --> 00:33:14,310
which is Bitcoin isn't censorship resistant.

341
00:33:14,930 --> 00:33:17,930
It just happens to not be censored right now

342
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because we have two entities that

343
00:33:20,970 --> 00:33:24,210
at the push of a button could censor transactions.

344
00:33:25,270 --> 00:33:28,450
And I guess you could, you know,

345
00:33:28,450 --> 00:33:38,570
There's lots of – you could think your way around that in terms of miners switching pools, but the fact that it can happen means that we're in a really bad state.

346
00:33:38,570 --> 00:33:42,850
I think censorship is a big one.

347
00:33:43,390 --> 00:33:56,430
Is Bitcoin – when – not if, but when Bitcoin becomes – like when the world is on a Bitcoin standard, do you think access to block spaces is going to be non-competitive?

348
00:33:56,430 --> 00:34:12,430
It's going to be extremely competitive and acquiring the design rights for the majority of the network, like to be able to rewrite the chain, do a 51% attack or sensor.

349
00:34:13,130 --> 00:34:16,850
I think it could be like a huge, huge tool.

350
00:34:17,330 --> 00:34:18,450
So I don't really know.

351
00:34:19,330 --> 00:34:24,810
It's hard to sort of pinpoint what it's going to look like, but the fact that it can happen right now.

352
00:34:24,810 --> 00:34:30,610
today we're sitting here we're one phone call away from censorship on the network like yeah

353
00:34:30,610 --> 00:34:35,390
and when you say that one's one phone call away you're talking about like a phone call from

354
00:34:35,390 --> 00:34:41,530
president trump phone call from president trump to the ceo of a foundry for example

355
00:34:41,530 --> 00:34:49,090
they could do some major damage and and the um the phrase 51 attack

356
00:34:49,090 --> 00:34:57,170
a common misunderstanding is that you need 51 percent of the hash rate to carry it out but

357
00:34:57,170 --> 00:35:02,410
that's not true 51 percent is is the point at which you are guaranteed to get away with the

358
00:35:02,410 --> 00:35:07,750
attack but you can actually start the attack at 20 to 30 percent hash rate so we're already sitting

359
00:35:07,750 --> 00:35:14,210
in in this state where um we're just in a vulnerable position so well one question i

360
00:35:14,210 --> 00:35:18,110
would say there just to clarify it's like if you had 51 there's still the probability that you could

361
00:35:18,110 --> 00:35:24,670
have bad luck over a period of time and expend resources and and fall behind right but sure i

362
00:35:24,670 --> 00:35:31,510
see your i see your point over the long term on the other side you don't have to have 51 to

363
00:35:31,510 --> 00:35:39,250
potentially you could like you could do major damage to to the blockchain yeah with 20 and so

364
00:35:39,250 --> 00:35:44,210
yeah so one phone call away when you have one entity that designs the block templates

365
00:35:44,210 --> 00:35:45,990
for thousands of miners,

366
00:35:46,290 --> 00:35:48,030
it's essentially the same block template.

367
00:35:48,170 --> 00:35:48,590
It's one.

368
00:35:49,070 --> 00:35:52,110
It's as if every miner on those pools

369
00:35:52,110 --> 00:35:53,850
is literally one big miner.

370
00:35:54,310 --> 00:35:56,410
In that relationship, the pool is the miner,

371
00:35:57,030 --> 00:35:58,150
and what we call the miner

372
00:35:58,150 --> 00:35:59,850
is just providing the hash power

373
00:35:59,850 --> 00:36:01,410
for that single miner.

374
00:36:01,970 --> 00:36:03,810
One of the points, at least the way I see it,

375
00:36:03,810 --> 00:36:05,810
is that there's two...

376
00:36:05,810 --> 00:36:09,110
I see the risk of censorship

377
00:36:09,110 --> 00:36:11,270
and the risk of changes to Bitcoin

378
00:36:11,270 --> 00:36:13,450
being greater than the 51% attack.

379
00:36:13,630 --> 00:36:13,810
Okay.

380
00:36:13,810 --> 00:36:21,390
but I agree that those are like the three primary surface areas that there's

381
00:36:21,390 --> 00:36:22,390
the idea that,

382
00:36:22,390 --> 00:36:23,070
Hey,

383
00:36:23,110 --> 00:36:27,990
if you got these two massive pools and maybe marathon,

384
00:36:28,070 --> 00:36:31,850
or maybe you don't even need marathon to sensor transactions,

385
00:36:31,850 --> 00:36:33,670
then,

386
00:36:33,670 --> 00:36:34,790
you know,

387
00:36:34,810 --> 00:36:35,830
when I posed the question to,

388
00:36:35,890 --> 00:36:37,150
to Phil in the last episode,

389
00:36:37,150 --> 00:36:37,530
it was like,

390
00:36:37,570 --> 00:36:37,730
well,

391
00:36:37,750 --> 00:36:39,410
you might go offline for a period,

392
00:36:39,410 --> 00:36:39,830
but you,

393
00:36:39,910 --> 00:36:41,150
you start solo mining.

394
00:36:41,150 --> 00:36:53,830
But the perspective is if mining is centralized and it's not this massive game of whack-a-mole, then it's not like the pools are just doing it on their own volition.

395
00:36:54,150 --> 00:37:00,550
They're doing it because there's some regulatory pressure, some jurisdictional pressure.

396
00:37:00,550 --> 00:37:06,070
and to think that if you start from a centralized world and you want to peel off and that you're

397
00:37:06,070 --> 00:37:13,330
not going to be easy to be a mole that's whacked is unrealistic i think in my perspective and that

398
00:37:13,330 --> 00:37:19,550
if you you know if you wait to that point to to solve that most critical risk of thinking of an

399
00:37:19,550 --> 00:37:24,230
individual miner being like hey the value of your asset the asset value it's like the energy

400
00:37:24,230 --> 00:37:30,510
infrastructure is the integrity of the system that you can't wait to for that call to be made

401
00:37:30,510 --> 00:37:36,330
to by that point it would be too late yeah is what you're saying yeah yeah um and so i think

402
00:37:36,330 --> 00:37:39,750
that there's there's all you know there's the question of well i could just switch and but if

403
00:37:39,750 --> 00:37:44,430
right but if they're all getting the same phone call then it's like okay well i'll go start a new

404
00:37:44,430 --> 00:37:49,130
pool but you're like well what is the circumstance looks like and is that realistic and maybe there's

405
00:37:49,130 --> 00:37:53,770
some other geopolitical interest that's a state actor that has an interest not to

406
00:37:53,770 --> 00:37:57,490
to respond to similar requests,

407
00:37:57,650 --> 00:38:01,090
but it's not a good state to be in.

408
00:38:01,210 --> 00:38:03,870
And if you're thinking about the individual minor incentives,

409
00:38:04,470 --> 00:38:07,310
everyone has to act in their own self-interest,

410
00:38:07,310 --> 00:38:11,990
but with the integrity of the system as a whole in mind

411
00:38:11,990 --> 00:38:14,550
because their assets are tied to that system.

412
00:38:18,030 --> 00:38:21,970
Now, when it comes to what you're actually working on at Ocean

413
00:38:21,970 --> 00:38:24,050
and how you guys are helping to solve a problem.

414
00:38:25,050 --> 00:38:27,070
One is providing another pool.

415
00:38:27,550 --> 00:38:31,310
So more pools, less centralization.

416
00:38:32,130 --> 00:38:37,790
But what would you say most differentiates ocean as a pool

417
00:38:37,790 --> 00:38:39,670
other than just being another pool?

418
00:38:39,670 --> 00:38:40,070
Yeah.

419
00:38:40,770 --> 00:38:43,930
Well, what differentiates us is we,

420
00:38:45,710 --> 00:38:50,930
if you think of a pool as in the traditional sense,

421
00:38:50,930 --> 00:38:53,970
like the other pools were, we're not really like a pool.

422
00:38:53,970 --> 00:38:57,010
We're more of a payment coordinator between miners.

423
00:38:57,330 --> 00:39:03,850
So we've, we've created a mechanism through Datum for miners to take back

424
00:39:03,850 --> 00:39:09,830
control of the intelligent parts of mining and become solo miners in a sense.

425
00:39:10,910 --> 00:39:11,010
But.

426
00:39:11,990 --> 00:39:13,090
Way before.

427
00:39:13,310 --> 00:39:16,730
So Datum is decentralized alternative.

428
00:39:17,550 --> 00:39:19,750
If you get it right, I'll give you a shirt.

429
00:39:20,090 --> 00:39:20,370
No.

430
00:39:20,930 --> 00:39:22,930
You give it to me.

431
00:39:23,190 --> 00:39:24,330
You already gave me a hat.

432
00:39:24,470 --> 00:39:27,310
Decentralized alternative templates for universal mining.

433
00:39:27,550 --> 00:39:27,690
Okay.

434
00:39:28,070 --> 00:39:28,250
Yeah.

435
00:39:29,030 --> 00:39:34,550
So think of it, if you can picture a traditional centralized pool,

436
00:39:34,710 --> 00:39:38,070
is you have Bitcoin and then you have the pool running,

437
00:39:38,590 --> 00:39:40,890
who runs the full node, peers with the network,

438
00:39:41,990 --> 00:39:46,450
pool builds a local mempool, pool builds block template,

439
00:39:46,930 --> 00:39:50,190
turns that into work, SV1 stratum work,

440
00:39:50,190 --> 00:39:51,370
and then gives it to the miner.

441
00:39:51,930 --> 00:39:55,750
Miner does the work, but goes straight up through the pool back to Bitcoin.

442
00:39:56,350 --> 00:39:59,330
But all decisions are made by the pool.

443
00:39:59,330 --> 00:40:06,290
And when the block is hit and the Bitcoin is created into existence,

444
00:40:06,390 --> 00:40:09,310
it goes to the pool and flows down to the miners.

445
00:40:09,550 --> 00:40:12,690
So they control the upstream work and the downstream payment.

446
00:40:12,690 --> 00:40:21,230
ocean through datum we've completely taken ourselves to the to the most practical extent

447
00:40:21,230 --> 00:40:28,210
possible out of the equation and we let miners interface directly with bitcoin so the miner has

448
00:40:28,210 --> 00:40:32,930
the hash power the miner runs a full node the miner builds their own block template and they

449
00:40:32,930 --> 00:40:39,870
peer with bitcoin directly and they all do that and in a sense they're all solo miners because

450
00:40:39,870 --> 00:40:43,410
solo mining is being sovereign and choosing your block templates.

451
00:40:44,050 --> 00:40:46,370
The role of ocean is really a payment coordinator.

452
00:40:46,870 --> 00:40:52,290
We come along and say, Parker, you were 10% of your 10% of the pool.

453
00:40:53,750 --> 00:40:55,610
I'm 10% nachos.

454
00:40:56,650 --> 00:40:57,330
What are you?

455
00:40:57,390 --> 00:40:58,050
80%.

456
00:40:58,050 --> 00:41:05,350
So Parker, if you find this next block, you need to pay 80% to nacho, whatever 80% of

457
00:41:05,350 --> 00:41:09,910
the block subsidy and reward is and pay 10% to yourself and 10% to me.

458
00:41:10,250 --> 00:41:15,750
And we essentially give, we give the miners the payout slip that says, if you find a block,

459
00:41:15,890 --> 00:41:17,310
this is who you have to pay.

460
00:41:17,410 --> 00:41:18,710
And this is how much you have to pay them.

461
00:41:19,070 --> 00:41:22,910
And we come up with that by looking at the work done over a period of time.

462
00:41:23,230 --> 00:41:28,770
And we just, we just maintain a spreadsheet essentially of who did what work and how much

463
00:41:28,770 --> 00:41:34,590
of a payout that would translate into if, you know, it's, and it's updated in real time,

464
00:41:34,590 --> 00:41:40,750
essentially we don't make the block template and when a block is found the money goes directly into

465
00:41:40,750 --> 00:41:47,210
the miners wallets it doesn't come into ours like we're non-custodial so does the

466
00:41:47,210 --> 00:41:54,310
and i don't know this answer but the payout structure does it go to the individual miner

467
00:41:54,310 --> 00:42:00,930
that actually solves the block and then from there after 100 blocks does it get distributed or

468
00:42:00,930 --> 00:42:03,070
Or is it paying out to all the...

469
00:42:03,070 --> 00:42:08,630
No, it's paying out to the miners directly in the generation transaction.

470
00:42:09,410 --> 00:42:17,470
So in the generation transaction is the first transaction when a block is found.

471
00:42:18,230 --> 00:42:26,670
And the list of outputs in every other pool, the list, the output UTXO is the pool's Bitcoin address.

472
00:42:27,050 --> 00:42:30,890
For an ocean block, the output address is 60 addresses.

473
00:42:30,930 --> 00:42:38,050
belonging to the top 60 miners on ocean so if you're 10 of our hash rate you get paid

474
00:42:38,050 --> 00:42:45,690
0.3 bitcoin immediately directly from the network without going to the pool first

475
00:42:45,690 --> 00:42:54,750
and then how did how are the smaller miners good question so um that is a function bitcoin has the

476
00:42:54,750 --> 00:43:01,470
capacity to pay many, many miners at once, but firmware is generally the limiting factor.

477
00:43:01,470 --> 00:43:09,030
So in the early days of, um, of Allegius, when Luke ran it, he would pay hundreds of miners.

478
00:43:09,030 --> 00:43:15,270
And again, the subsidy at that time was 50 Bitcoin. So, but 900 and something was the top,

479
00:43:15,390 --> 00:43:19,850
like you would 900 individual miners were getting paid directly in the generation transaction.

480
00:43:19,850 --> 00:43:25,710
But over time, the firmware from Bitmain essentially was just not maintained.

481
00:43:26,370 --> 00:43:30,950
And so there's a limit to how much data you can.

482
00:43:31,510 --> 00:43:36,090
Ocean's giving miners the payout information in the Coinbase.

483
00:43:36,570 --> 00:43:42,870
And so you can only put so much data before the firmware just kind of chokes up.

484
00:43:42,870 --> 00:43:49,730
So depending on what miner found the block, you can have more or fewer output addresses.

485
00:43:49,850 --> 00:43:54,330
The worst case scenario in an ant miner, it's like 16 addresses.

486
00:43:55,530 --> 00:43:57,590
In a what's miner, it's closer to 60.

487
00:43:57,810 --> 00:44:01,870
And hopefully as firmware gets better, then we'll be able to push that number.

488
00:44:02,750 --> 00:44:08,750
And all of those miners are getting paid UTXOs directly from the network.

489
00:44:08,930 --> 00:44:09,930
So zero hops.

490
00:44:10,310 --> 00:44:13,110
You can touch Bitcoin from it, basically.

491
00:44:13,810 --> 00:44:18,790
And everybody who's below the threshold, they get paid out in a secondary transaction that

492
00:44:18,790 --> 00:44:19,710
Ocean sends.

493
00:44:19,850 --> 00:44:22,970
So temporary control, but never custody of that funds.

494
00:44:23,830 --> 00:44:27,570
And we have a minimum payment threshold of about a million sats.

495
00:44:28,370 --> 00:44:29,990
But we also have Lightning, Bolt 12.

496
00:44:30,090 --> 00:44:30,970
I was going to ask the question.

497
00:44:31,670 --> 00:44:36,930
A lot of our miners are already configured on Lightning,

498
00:44:37,150 --> 00:44:43,250
and essentially they're getting paid out daily every time we have blocks via Lightning.

499
00:44:44,570 --> 00:44:49,830
Okay, that was for my own education, but hopefully others would probably have the same question.

500
00:44:49,850 --> 00:45:01,350
But in a worst case scenario, it's effectively like, say, the 15 large, if it's an ant miner, the 15 largest miners, it all goes out direct.

501
00:45:01,470 --> 00:45:05,250
And then the percentage that's remaining gets dealt with.

502
00:45:06,510 --> 00:45:11,570
And that's like 99% of the block reward goes out in those top 15.

503
00:45:11,570 --> 00:45:11,950
Yeah, yeah.

504
00:45:12,190 --> 00:45:17,010
Because the majority of hash rate is aggregated to a few large miners.

505
00:45:17,250 --> 00:45:18,750
Right, versus it all going to one.

506
00:45:18,750 --> 00:45:19,230
Right.

507
00:45:19,230 --> 00:45:27,750
and then and then being distributed so you mentioned datum and that

508
00:45:27,750 --> 00:45:36,350
one of the key distinction is that every miner is like every miner is actually running their own

509
00:45:36,350 --> 00:45:42,290
node that's part of ocean is that correct um if you're running not every miner but i would say

510
00:45:42,290 --> 00:45:47,670
the majority are so we okay so so so you enable them to but they don't have to yeah we're we're

511
00:45:47,670 --> 00:45:52,950
really big believers in your your hash rate your choice if you want to if you

512
00:45:52,950 --> 00:45:58,830
want to run our node you're more than happy to send the hash rate just send it

513
00:45:58,830 --> 00:46:03,570
to mind out ocean dot XYZ and if you we encourage you to run your own note and

514
00:46:03,570 --> 00:46:17,715
if you do there more work involved in it entails running a node and a datum gateway but I would say right now I think about 90 of our hash rate is on Datum And there a few miners who don want to do it and that fine

515
00:46:17,855 --> 00:46:21,175
But most of them are, and we're making it super easy as well.

516
00:46:21,175 --> 00:46:27,535
It's available through a number of different clients and platforms like Start9 and Umbrella.

517
00:46:28,795 --> 00:46:35,135
And so the other thing that you mentioned was when you were drawing the comparisons between how Ocean is structured,

518
00:46:35,275 --> 00:46:41,995
allowing Bitcoin miners to peer directly with the Bitcoin network

519
00:46:41,995 --> 00:46:46,115
versus doing all the work and then pointing back up to the pool

520
00:46:46,115 --> 00:46:49,435
where ultimately the funds get paid out to

521
00:46:49,435 --> 00:46:52,675
in the context of a foundry or an ant pool.

522
00:46:54,535 --> 00:46:59,315
Just talk a little bit about the differences between the Datum protocol,

523
00:47:00,055 --> 00:47:03,715
which Ocean runs, and that piece is open source,

524
00:47:03,715 --> 00:47:15,615
in stratum but also the differences between um datum and stratum v2 so in in um datum is is uh

525
00:47:15,615 --> 00:47:23,155
just another protocol that that we wrote to kind of enable this decentralized mining to happen today

526
00:47:23,155 --> 00:47:30,895
um but communication with the with the with the asic servers are still done in stratum stratum v1

527
00:47:30,895 --> 00:47:52,895
So essentially the flow is, if you're running Datum on site, you would have a box, you'd have like, you know, a mini PC or Intel NUC or something larger, but it's something that's large enough to run a Bitcoin node, full node and sync and, but Datum on, and then you have a full node, you install the Datum software on top of it.

528
00:47:52,895 --> 00:47:57,935
And the flow essentially is your node peers with the network.

529
00:47:59,715 --> 00:48:04,995
The Datum gateway turns the block templates into Stratum work.

530
00:48:05,095 --> 00:48:06,535
So essentially it's a Stratum server.

531
00:48:07,075 --> 00:48:11,195
And then it communicates with the ASIC servers over Stratum v1.

532
00:48:12,175 --> 00:48:20,975
And Datum on site communicates with Ocean's Datum, which we call Datum Prime, over the Datum protocol layer.

533
00:48:20,975 --> 00:48:32,095
So it's an encrypted protocol and we built it from scratch in order to solve a very particular problem, which is miners don't have the tools to make their block templates today.

534
00:48:32,495 --> 00:48:37,215
And we need them to make their own block templates in order for Bitcoin to be censorship resistant.

535
00:48:37,215 --> 00:48:49,455
So when we launched the company, and if you go back to some of our earliest pitch decks and PowerPoint presentations, there was no datum in there anywhere.

536
00:48:50,015 --> 00:48:57,095
We were actually intending to use Stratum v2 because it was the predominant protocol and project in the space.

537
00:48:57,095 --> 00:49:06,955
and um we uh our engineers um primarily jason hughes um i would say we launched in november of

538
00:49:06,955 --> 00:49:13,595
23 and we we launched as a centralized pool so we didn't have datum yet everybody was using our

539
00:49:13,595 --> 00:49:19,355
templates and we got to work really quickly about building building out the next phase which is let's

540
00:49:19,355 --> 00:49:24,795
let's build the tools and push it off to the miners outsource the control back to the miners

541
00:49:24,795 --> 00:49:33,475
and um yeah jason dug into the code and um and the inner workings of stratum v2 and just kind

542
00:49:33,475 --> 00:49:38,075
of came to the conclusion that it wasn't the best tool for the job right now at this time

543
00:49:38,075 --> 00:49:47,395
um i'm not a developer myself so but from from his perspective he needed something that was

544
00:49:47,395 --> 00:49:56,815
lightweight, um, that was purpose built for decentralization in mind. And it was easy,

545
00:49:56,815 --> 00:50:02,395
uh, easy enough to deploy in a variety of hardware configurations and rapidly scale.

546
00:50:02,695 --> 00:50:09,455
And those, those things just weren't possible with stratum V2. And, um, and so Jason,

547
00:50:09,735 --> 00:50:16,215
it was also written in a language that he, he's, you know, he's a C guy, he's a C maxi. So he,

548
00:50:16,215 --> 00:50:21,975
He basically said, look, we need to decentralize mining in a jiffy.

549
00:50:21,975 --> 00:50:29,275
And this protocol, while the intent is great, and I think we're all fighting for the same thing in terms of decentralization,

550
00:50:29,955 --> 00:50:35,455
it was originally a protocol that wasn't designed.

551
00:50:35,635 --> 00:50:39,155
It wasn't intended to be a decentralizing protocol.

552
00:50:39,335 --> 00:50:43,855
It was proposed early on after Stratom v1 to fix the lack of encryption.

553
00:50:43,855 --> 00:50:46,435
And over the years, different features were added.

554
00:50:46,755 --> 00:50:47,535
Security, privacy.

555
00:50:47,675 --> 00:50:48,495
Yeah, privacy.

556
00:50:48,835 --> 00:50:49,995
And eventually...

557
00:50:49,995 --> 00:50:50,615
Efficiency, too.

558
00:50:50,615 --> 00:50:55,675
Eventually, the concept of decentralization was sort of bolted on after the fact.

559
00:50:55,795 --> 00:51:01,535
Well, if we have a job negotiator, then we can let miners participate in that.

560
00:51:01,655 --> 00:51:09,455
But it's a centralized protocol that has ways to allow miners to participate.

561
00:51:09,455 --> 00:51:15,235
but from the ground up from the from the core that the design was was never a decentralized

562
00:51:15,235 --> 00:51:21,335
protocol so centralized in the sense that the pool is running it yeah yeah the pool runs the

563
00:51:21,335 --> 00:51:27,315
main stratum v2 server and has various interfaces with the miners and i'm not sure if the design has

564
00:51:27,315 --> 00:51:33,735
changed since we first looked at it it may have but at that time it was it was it wasn't kind of

565
00:51:33,735 --> 00:51:37,075
like consistent with the ethos of giving control to the miners.

566
00:51:37,075 --> 00:51:39,075
Cause in that system,

567
00:51:39,755 --> 00:51:45,095
the pool still retained the authoritative decision-making power to say yay or

568
00:51:45,095 --> 00:51:45,375
nay.

569
00:51:46,015 --> 00:51:46,755
Miners had a say,

570
00:51:46,875 --> 00:51:48,935
but it was ultimately the pool's call at the end.

571
00:51:48,935 --> 00:51:50,535
And that wasn't good enough for us.

572
00:51:50,775 --> 00:51:50,895
Yeah.

573
00:51:50,955 --> 00:51:54,975
My understanding from an interaction with Matt Carallo online is that there,

574
00:51:55,855 --> 00:51:56,055
there,

575
00:51:56,275 --> 00:51:58,575
there's no concept of a negotiation.

576
00:51:58,575 --> 00:52:00,975
There was some term of a negotiator,

577
00:52:01,095 --> 00:52:02,055
but that,

578
00:52:02,055 --> 00:52:09,015
um the pool may set the template and then the the

579
00:52:09,015 --> 00:52:16,795
miner would construct you know you know select their own transactions if it fit the pool's

580
00:52:16,795 --> 00:52:24,155
template you know and so it's like hey well if they're mining off the template it's not like a

581
00:52:24,155 --> 00:52:30,075
negotiation on a per transaction basis but it still seems to me that there's an input side which

582
00:52:30,075 --> 00:52:40,555
is they can preset what transactions would be allowable or not and that being set at the pool

583
00:52:40,555 --> 00:52:49,595
level and so one of the one of the key things that i'm trying to understand is it seems to me that

584
00:52:49,595 --> 00:52:56,955
the the miners themselves being in absolute control of the templates

585
00:52:56,955 --> 00:52:59,515
is critical to

586
00:52:59,515 --> 00:53:02,475
the decentralization

587
00:53:02,475 --> 00:53:04,195
if the pools,

588
00:53:05,455 --> 00:53:05,675
you know,

589
00:53:05,715 --> 00:53:06,655
if working with a pool.

590
00:53:06,915 --> 00:53:07,935
Is that fair to say?

591
00:53:08,015 --> 00:53:10,455
And is there an aspect of Datum

592
00:53:10,455 --> 00:53:11,455
that allows that

593
00:53:11,455 --> 00:53:12,735
that wasn't in Stratum B2?

594
00:53:13,055 --> 00:53:14,735
Like, what is that mechanism?

595
00:53:15,035 --> 00:53:16,275
Because there's the importance

596
00:53:16,275 --> 00:53:17,275
of the payout going straight

597
00:53:17,275 --> 00:53:18,435
from the Coinbase.

598
00:53:19,555 --> 00:53:20,595
But theoretically,

599
00:53:21,715 --> 00:53:22,075
you know,

600
00:53:22,635 --> 00:53:22,955
if,

601
00:53:24,595 --> 00:53:25,415
I mean,

602
00:53:25,495 --> 00:53:26,855
they would have to design a system.

603
00:53:26,955 --> 00:53:35,535
that, um, one of the pools, ant pool or, or foundry could, could do something like that in

604
00:53:35,535 --> 00:53:42,575
theory from a payout perspective, but from an actual construction of the block and being in

605
00:53:42,575 --> 00:53:47,555
absolute control of that. And then knowing, you know, having some assurance because the payout

606
00:53:47,555 --> 00:53:52,775
is direct from the miners, the combination of those two things, it seems like that is like

607
00:53:52,775 --> 00:53:57,775
those two things together is critical to actually putting more control on the miners is that fair and

608
00:53:57,775 --> 00:54:02,175
and what is the mechanism in datum that maybe allows that or what's the difference between datum

609
00:54:02,175 --> 00:54:09,135
and stratum v2 that allows that so using your explanation kind of how you framed it the the

610
00:54:09,135 --> 00:54:14,915
stratum v2 setup would kind of be like pool works hand in glove with miner to come up with

611
00:54:14,915 --> 00:54:21,355
a template where the pool has a say and the miner has a say and there's there's a bit of a handshake

612
00:54:21,355 --> 00:54:24,535
and that's kind of like quasi-decentralized.

613
00:54:25,195 --> 00:54:29,075
But if the pool has any say at all,

614
00:54:29,175 --> 00:54:32,795
then they're a target for coercion.

615
00:54:33,255 --> 00:54:36,875
So in our case, we have no say what goes into the template.

616
00:54:37,475 --> 00:54:40,795
If you're a miner on Ocean and you're making your template,

617
00:54:40,795 --> 00:54:46,295
as long as it's a valid block, we can't do anything about it.

618
00:54:46,295 --> 00:54:53,835
the only thing we do is we tell you how much to pay nacho and we tell you how much to pay me

619
00:54:53,835 --> 00:54:59,795
but what you put in your block is entirely up to you for better or for worse the whole point is

620
00:54:59,795 --> 00:55:07,235
we want miners making the choice so that so that there's not one throat to choke

621
00:55:07,235 --> 00:55:14,615
in our world if ocean had a hundred percent of the hash rate theoretically hopefully um

622
00:55:14,615 --> 00:55:20,535
Maybe not hopefully, but it's a thought exercise, proving the point.

623
00:55:21,135 --> 00:55:25,135
If we had 100% of the hash rate and every miner was running datum,

624
00:55:25,595 --> 00:55:36,795
then we would have thousands of individual templates being created by thousands of unique miners whose identities we don't know.

625
00:55:37,235 --> 00:55:39,795
Because we don't have customers.

626
00:55:39,995 --> 00:55:40,915
We have Bitcoin addresses.

627
00:55:41,595 --> 00:55:43,715
When you mine on us, there's no accounts.

628
00:55:43,715 --> 00:56:03,275
There's no sign up. You just mine with a Bitcoin address. And the mechanism to do that is turn each miner into a solo miner. Each miner runs a stratum server, peering directly with the network, totally sovereign entity with full decision making authority over what goes in their block.

629
00:56:03,275 --> 00:56:10,055
and if everybody's doing that and we all collectively agree to split rewards with each

630
00:56:10,055 --> 00:56:18,215
other then then two things happen bitcoin it's become censorship resistant for real because

631
00:56:18,215 --> 00:56:24,375
there's not one throat to choke if you get a call from president trump to censor like

632
00:56:24,375 --> 00:56:29,135
there are literally tens of thousands of miners making templates we don't know who they are

633
00:56:29,135 --> 00:56:36,695
this is this is kind of like where bitcoin needs to go to to be really resilient um but then

634
00:56:36,695 --> 00:56:42,615
everybody it kind of like in a co-op setting everybody agrees to split rewards so we're all

635
00:56:42,615 --> 00:56:49,075
sort of sharing in the variance many hands make light work the goal is the goal is to have enough

636
00:56:49,075 --> 00:56:55,275
people absorbing the variance to the point where nobody actually feels the variance like you you

637
00:56:55,275 --> 00:57:05,335
brought up um a little bit earlier how it's good to have pools and there's there's um um

638
00:57:05,335 --> 00:57:10,215
it's actually you can't have too many pools there's a point where too many pools is a problem

639
00:57:10,215 --> 00:57:16,755
because for a pool to be viable it has to solve a certain number of blocks in any difficulty

640
00:57:16,755 --> 00:57:24,775
adjustment period and over any time horizon right right like and if you're providing an fpps

641
00:57:24,775 --> 00:57:29,835
guaranteed payout and and you don't have deep enough pockets and you hit bad luck then you're

642
00:57:29,835 --> 00:57:36,055
going bankrupt let's talk a little bit about that which is so we talked about datum v stratum which

643
00:57:36,055 --> 00:57:41,795
kind of at the core of it might be like how blocks are actually constructed and the templates

644
00:57:41,795 --> 00:57:50,195
um the ability to actually peer with the network versus a system that designed to basically peer

645
00:57:50,195 --> 00:57:54,795
with the pool itself, but then the payout structure.

646
00:57:54,975 --> 00:57:59,315
Because that has the, and for people that aren't as familiar,

647
00:57:59,535 --> 00:58:01,735
FPPS is fixed pay per share.

648
00:58:03,635 --> 00:58:10,915
And what is run through Ocean is a PPLNS pay per last day

649
00:58:10,915 --> 00:58:12,475
in number of shares.

650
00:58:14,275 --> 00:58:18,055
The FPPS pays out, based on the amount of work

651
00:58:18,055 --> 00:58:26,495
that you do the pool of a fixed amount that varies over time but is a fixed amount per work

652
00:58:26,495 --> 00:58:36,175
consistently um like say every day number of shares times rate versus ocean structure which

653
00:58:36,175 --> 00:58:43,075
there and as pools emerged when a slush pool and brains used to to run pplns as well but there

654
00:58:43,075 --> 00:58:48,495
were different scoring systems and that's another thing that's that's unique about ocean you have

655
00:58:48,495 --> 00:58:54,275
your your tides in terms of how those payouts are actually calculated um but just talk about

656
00:58:54,275 --> 00:58:59,355
the difference like and then also how you think about the because i mean this is something i

657
00:58:59,355 --> 00:59:04,795
genuinely don't don't understand why why the fpps piece is what has caused centralization and pools

658
00:59:04,795 --> 00:59:11,355
but also just when you think about aligning incentives in terms of the pool to the miners

659
00:59:11,355 --> 00:59:21,175
and risk why the the more variable payout of just saying hey we're gonna you know pay out as we as we

660
00:59:21,175 --> 00:59:29,075
solve blocks um why you know why did you settle there but also if you could tie that into you know

661
00:59:29,075 --> 00:59:35,335
kind of the almost necessary part of that being core to how you know if you have if you're gonna

662
00:59:35,335 --> 00:59:42,175
have a fixed payout system somehow money has to be centralized so just just talk about the

663
00:59:42,175 --> 00:59:47,575
differences in terms of the fixed payout system versus what ocean runs and people on us and how

664
00:59:47,575 --> 00:59:56,835
oceans people on us might differ from say what brains used to run yeah um most minor most mining

665
00:59:56,835 --> 01:00:05,395
pools run FPPS, like you said, and to kind of like sum it up at the beginning, the value

666
01:00:05,395 --> 01:00:13,875
proposition of ocean versus FPPS or our model is called tides. FPPS optimizes for cashflow

667
01:00:13,875 --> 01:00:22,855
at a very consistent cashflow at a premium and sometimes and oftentimes an invisible premium,

668
01:00:22,855 --> 01:00:27,715
but it solves cashflow and miners are operating cashflow businesses.

669
01:00:27,715 --> 01:00:30,435
So that's kind of like why that became really popular.

670
01:00:31,875 --> 01:00:34,695
Ocean and our, through our payout system tides,

671
01:00:34,795 --> 01:00:38,695
we optimize for maximum revenue because,

672
01:00:38,695 --> 01:00:41,275
because we're not,

673
01:00:41,275 --> 01:00:49,575
we're not a liquidity provider that has a cost of capital in the FPPS.

674
01:00:49,575 --> 01:00:56,055
uh there's a maximizing revenue in terms of maximizing pay payouts in terms x amount was

675
01:00:56,055 --> 01:01:02,755
mined yeah and we are going to just we're going to take our fee and distribute as much of that

676
01:01:02,755 --> 01:01:09,715
that was mined it's it's it's pure bitcoin mining if you're 10 of the pool and we hit a block

677
01:01:09,715 --> 01:01:19,175
the block subsidy plus transaction fees minus oceans fee you get 10 of what's left over

678
01:01:19,175 --> 01:01:23,715
and you can verify that down to the share level,

679
01:01:23,715 --> 01:01:25,255
down to the set.

680
01:01:25,255 --> 01:01:28,835
And it's 100% transparent and verifiable.

681
01:01:28,835 --> 01:01:33,675
And that you only get, you're sharing the,

682
01:01:33,720 --> 01:01:34,840
Sharing in the luck of the pool.

683
01:01:34,980 --> 01:01:38,100
So if we go unlucky, then you don't get paid.

684
01:01:38,240 --> 01:01:40,840
If we get really lucky, you win the lottery.

685
01:01:40,960 --> 01:01:43,080
You get paid multiple times per day.

686
01:01:43,540 --> 01:01:49,180
On average, just like anybody mining Bitcoin, on average, luck trends to 100%.

687
01:01:49,180 --> 01:01:54,340
So luck on any PPLNS-based or luck-based pool goes to 100%.

688
01:01:54,340 --> 01:01:58,840
But you're the closest to the source of the money.

689
01:01:59,360 --> 01:02:00,720
It's like being at the wellhead.

690
01:02:00,720 --> 01:02:05,540
You're the closest to the money and you're getting your share that's verifiable based on proof of work.

691
01:02:06,260 --> 01:02:21,300
FPPS, it's an entirely different system where the pool guarantees payouts based on a bit of an arbitrary formula and absorbs all the luck, the variance from the miners.

692
01:02:21,300 --> 01:02:29,320
and um over time since we launched it's been almost two years since since ocean launched the

693
01:02:29,320 --> 01:02:36,320
data is now coming out that that is a very expensive proposition to to be able to for for

694
01:02:36,320 --> 01:02:41,300
an entity a middleman to come in and say don't worry about any of the variants of this highly

695
01:02:41,300 --> 01:02:48,820
volatile asset called bitcoin that and mining is is extremely volatile as well we'll take on

696
01:02:48,820 --> 01:02:54,960
all of that variance and we're going to pay you a set amount um full paper share every day no matter

697
01:02:54,960 --> 01:03:01,000
what and miners are running the numbers they're running the comparisons and they're coming to us

698
01:03:01,000 --> 01:03:07,540
and saying hey i i ran the test i did fpps versus ocean and i came out ahead on ocean sometimes it's

699
01:03:07,540 --> 01:03:13,960
single digit sometimes it's double digit percentages but um over the long haul if as long as you as

700
01:03:13,960 --> 01:03:19,720
long as you run a test long enough where the luck is able to resolve to 100 there's just more money

701
01:03:19,720 --> 01:03:27,720
in your pocket so it's as we grow that volatility that variance um gets easier and easier and easier

702
01:03:27,720 --> 01:03:33,420
and we're sitting here today almost i guess a one and a half percent of the network and we're solving

703
01:03:33,420 --> 01:03:39,040
almost two blocks a day on average how many exahashes is that we have about 12 exahash

704
01:03:39,040 --> 01:03:46,660
on the pool and growing and growing and growing faster than taking share in the network um yeah

705
01:03:46,660 --> 01:03:50,900
i mean one of the things that again it doesn't make sense to me is that you know when i look at

706
01:03:50,900 --> 01:03:57,380
the fpps system and i'm trying to understand this because the market has largely said

707
01:03:57,380 --> 01:04:06,600
based on where hashrate has gone historically maybe it's a lack of options certainly um

708
01:04:06,600 --> 01:04:12,980
brains is shift from a pplns pool but there there was something different about how they scored and

709
01:04:12,980 --> 01:04:22,340
tides yeah but that effectively that fixed payout per share it is a a hedge to variance that isn't

710
01:04:22,340 --> 01:04:27,200
actually quantified it's like hey there was this total amount that went to the pool

711
01:04:27,200 --> 01:04:32,900
or paying out based on shares and and you don't necessarily know how many total shares there were

712
01:04:32,900 --> 01:04:38,880
it's not this this base okay here here's everything and you're having to trust the pool

713
01:04:38,880 --> 01:04:43,760
and it almost seems like something that should exist as like a separate financial service

714
01:04:43,760 --> 01:04:51,780
that here's the work it's paid out and if you specific mine is participating in the pool wants

715
01:04:51,780 --> 01:04:59,440
to hedge your variance here's an actual hedge that you can pay for and then and it's actually

716
01:04:59,440 --> 01:05:04,780
quantified but you know i think i think part of that is just the the market going through and

717
01:05:04,780 --> 01:05:10,300
needing to have other options um but one of the things because this is the other refrain that's

718
01:05:10,300 --> 01:05:15,420
consistently said is that that pools are terrible businesses like i hear that consistently of like

719
01:05:15,420 --> 01:05:23,440
why are why why is mining on the pool side become more centralized and people will say oh that's a

720
01:05:23,440 --> 01:05:29,060
terrible business and that's why it's centralized and that that's that's not logical to me because if

721
01:05:29,060 --> 01:05:33,580
it was a terrible business. Why are there these couple of businesses that, you know, are seemingly

722
01:05:33,580 --> 01:05:40,260
large and doing very well and part of its capitalization. But to me, when I look at it,

723
01:05:40,260 --> 01:05:50,860
it's a matter of aligning incentives and delivering good software, like having valuable software

724
01:05:50,860 --> 01:05:57,020
and then having the right business model. And one of the things from an alignment perspective,

725
01:05:57,020 --> 01:06:05,720
it's like i can see how hey miners running their own nodes if they want to payouts going directly

726
01:06:05,720 --> 01:06:13,640
um to me at least but which to the market to the side being like hey you get paid out as you

727
01:06:13,640 --> 01:06:19,360
find blocks but one of the things that you know in terms of miners that i've talked to struggle with

728
01:06:19,360 --> 01:06:26,020
is and one of the things we haven't talked about which in my view is a big pro is that

729
01:06:26,020 --> 01:06:33,420
you also can run your own implementation so people can run knots on ocean people can run

730
01:06:33,420 --> 01:06:40,420
core but one of the concerns that i have is like hey if i'm a miner and when i'm talking about

731
01:06:40,420 --> 01:06:45,920
aligning incentives it's there's aligning incentives between miner and pool and aligning

732
01:06:45,920 --> 01:06:52,280
incentives from miner to miner is if i'm mining and and maximizing the amount of fees in a block

733
01:06:52,280 --> 01:06:59,300
and there are other miners that are optimizing for number of transactions in a block and filtering

734
01:06:59,300 --> 01:07:09,380
jpegs and other spam and i have the perception that that's lowering my um you know maximum

735
01:07:09,380 --> 01:07:15,840
potential revenue how do i how do i become aligned with those other miners like how do you think about

736
01:07:15,840 --> 01:07:23,080
aligning interests because it is you know a two-way function between not just the miner and

737
01:07:23,080 --> 01:07:27,460
the pool and those incentives being right but the the incentive from miner to miner just how do you

738
01:07:27,460 --> 01:07:34,440
think about those trade-offs yeah no that's a good question and um it's a really good point to get

739
01:07:34,440 --> 01:07:40,980
right and maybe looking at an extreme example if i'm mining empty blocks and you're not where the

740
01:07:40,980 --> 01:07:46,900
value of our two blocks are going to look different and it wouldn't be fair if we got paid out the

741
01:07:46,900 --> 01:07:57,820
same so the way we've designed datum is is to essentially pay the miner the equivalent of what

742
01:07:57,820 --> 01:08:04,220
they would have earned had they had they've solo mined their blocks over a period of time so if i

743
01:08:04,220 --> 01:08:10,220
if i mine empty blocks with no transactions on average i'm going to solve so many blocks and

744
01:08:10,220 --> 01:08:13,900
I'm going to get the subsidy over a period of the year, over a year,

745
01:08:13,960 --> 01:08:15,380
and it's going to look different from yours.

746
01:08:15,380 --> 01:08:21,760
And we work backwards into the calculation to essentially weight them differently.

747
01:08:22,180 --> 01:08:33,600
So it's miners who bring in differing amounts of value,

748
01:08:33,840 --> 01:08:38,060
basically aren't subsidizing each other for their individual choices.

749
01:08:38,060 --> 01:08:45,400
everybody has their individual choice to do what they want but um it doesn't affect the other

750
01:08:45,400 --> 01:08:52,220
miners around the pool in a negative way and the one question that i just thought of and i'll

751
01:08:52,220 --> 01:09:03,640
continue here but with a pool running stratum d2 is your knowledge that it's all the um

752
01:09:03,640 --> 01:09:09,980
are miners able to run their own nodes and run different ways i mean maybe it's moved if the if

753
01:09:09,980 --> 01:09:14,960
the pool is putting templates in and they could say well you can't include transactions that either

754
01:09:14,960 --> 01:09:21,760
look like this or you can't include this you know a transaction from this address but um how on the

755
01:09:21,760 --> 01:09:28,720
node level or implementation sorry like between the ability to run multiple different implementations

756
01:09:28,720 --> 01:09:35,240
of bitcoin do the two systems compare like between data versus or is there or is there no difference

757
01:09:35,240 --> 01:09:42,200
i honestly don't know how advanced strata v2 is in in that and i don't know if it if it accepts

758
01:09:42,200 --> 01:09:48,200
different node clients i know we do like you mentioned you can run knots you can run core

759
01:09:48,200 --> 01:09:55,340
it's literally your choice like this is this is the the free market like this is this you can run

760
01:09:55,340 --> 01:09:57,960
as long as it's a valid client and you're making valid blocks.

761
01:09:58,940 --> 01:10:05,840
And the key piece here is you can actually run Datum in solo mining mode if you want.

762
01:10:05,840 --> 01:10:07,460
It's free software.

763
01:10:07,740 --> 01:10:08,580
It's open source.

764
01:10:09,300 --> 01:10:13,960
You can toggle a switch at the beginning to say, I want to mine solo.

765
01:10:14,220 --> 01:10:16,660
I just want to solo mine and not split rewards with anybody.

766
01:10:17,100 --> 01:10:19,180
And it's basically a free Stratum server.

767
01:10:19,180 --> 01:10:27,860
the value and kind of the magic is is by operating in split reward mode you get to be independent but

768
01:10:27,860 --> 01:10:35,660
share the rewards so for us it um in terms of how you run your node and how you get paid out it

769
01:10:35,660 --> 01:10:41,300
makes no difference we just look at the work done the proof of work and then tally up all the shares

770
01:10:41,300 --> 01:10:47,340
from minor a and minor b and add them together and develop ratios and then those ratios are

771
01:10:47,340 --> 01:10:55,500
multiplied against the next block so that i mean and also i mean what you described there is that

772
01:10:55,500 --> 01:11:00,360
it makes it fundamentally easier should there ever be an issue with the pool

773
01:11:00,360 --> 01:11:09,840
to yeah and and like right right now there's there's um the shares have to be

774
01:11:09,840 --> 01:11:18,920
the shares that the miner submits are validated by Ocean to make sure that they meet the target

775
01:11:18,920 --> 01:11:35,905
difficulty So there is some degree of kind of like spot checking that that goes on But it it a pragmatic approach because it it a decent It as decentralized as we can make it while still working because we we had you know a couple hundred data blocks in the wild already

776
01:11:36,505 --> 01:11:41,825
This software has been it's been working for 12 months, pretty much without issue.

777
01:11:41,825 --> 01:11:52,265
And some of the biggest companies in the world are using Datum as we sit here today, actively, like consciously choosing it over other implementations.

778
01:11:52,485 --> 01:11:58,005
But we're never like satisfied with where we're at.

779
01:11:58,085 --> 01:12:09,385
So we're actually working on ways to make it even more decentralized and allow individual miners to validate each other's proof of work.

780
01:12:09,385 --> 01:12:17,605
the goal is the goal is to get the pool as far from the position of authority as we can

781
01:12:17,605 --> 01:12:26,205
so that the miners are are the the decision makers so so that'll that'll probably come in

782
01:12:26,205 --> 01:12:33,505
in later um versions of datum down the road i'm not sure how how many quarters that's going to be

783
01:12:33,505 --> 01:12:40,845
But ultimately, we would like to get to a point where you submit work to the miner next to you.

784
01:12:40,945 --> 01:12:44,625
And that miner says, yeah, Parker submitted valid work.

785
01:12:44,765 --> 01:12:47,505
He he should get paid for that proof of work.

786
01:12:47,565 --> 01:12:51,685
And then and then Ocean says, OK, we trust you guys.

787
01:12:52,145 --> 01:12:57,205
Parker gets credit for that proof of work as opposed to us being the ones making that decision.

788
01:12:57,205 --> 01:13:06,125
So the more we can push that and doing it in a transparent way, I think it's we're just enabling miners to to like thrive.

789
01:13:06,625 --> 01:13:17,405
And the pool will need to exist in some capacity because somebody has to kind of keep a bit of a ledger about who did what proof of work in order to get paid.

790
01:13:17,405 --> 01:13:25,825
Yeah. And I have one other question about the alignment of sentences specifically on the filtering of different transaction types.

791
01:13:25,825 --> 01:13:34,305
but um one of the things that how do you ensure that if the my if the payouts are going directly

792
01:13:34,305 --> 01:13:40,085
from the coinbase transaction how i don't understand the mechanism that prevents you know

793
01:13:40,085 --> 01:13:45,145
again like if a miner cheated once they'd be out but like what prevents the miner from just taking

794
01:13:45,145 --> 01:13:54,305
the full reward is that is the is ocean do something to validate that the that um

795
01:13:54,305 --> 01:14:02,445
that each miner is hashing a um a template that has an output that has all of those

796
01:14:02,445 --> 01:14:09,905
addresses yeah so the the um the kind of like supervisory role we have in that scenario is

797
01:14:09,905 --> 01:14:18,645
you're is you're entitled to the split of every other miners blocks as long as you pay

798
01:14:18,645 --> 01:14:26,445
miners from your blocks. And it's, it's like a reciprocal agreement. The miners have between

799
01:14:26,445 --> 01:14:33,785
each other with, with Ocean kind of overseeing it. The moment you don't uphold your obligation

800
01:14:33,785 --> 01:14:42,025
to pay the other miners, then we, we would basically in, in the next versions of the

801
01:14:42,025 --> 01:14:47,265
coin bases, basically you would get penalized through, through the other miners, not including

802
01:14:47,265 --> 01:14:52,985
you're in their blocks. So it's, it's a bit of an honor system that we monitor and, um, it keeps

803
01:14:52,985 --> 01:14:57,085
everybody in check. Like if you essentially, essentially, if you're, if you're running in

804
01:14:57,085 --> 01:15:02,185
datum, you're getting paid from everybody else. And then you just go, essentially, you just flip

805
01:15:02,185 --> 01:15:07,585
the switch and you become a solo miner. You can, you can do that. But if, if you're not solo mining,

806
01:15:07,585 --> 01:15:14,245
um, and you're participating in ocean, but you like switch the payout mechanism, that that's

807
01:15:14,245 --> 01:15:18,425
kind of where we we would come in and and sort of adjust the rewards for everybody else's coin

808
01:15:18,425 --> 01:15:25,765
bases the next go around yeah it keeps it fair and balanced yeah and it is it's like this is

809
01:15:25,765 --> 01:15:30,105
oftentimes how stock exchange works like hey these are the rules and if you violate the rules you no

810
01:15:30,105 --> 01:15:35,305
longer get to participate in it so if you valued the the variance reduction that comes from yeah

811
01:15:35,305 --> 01:15:40,805
pooling resources um you can you could theory you could cheat in theory but you could only do it

812
01:15:40,805 --> 01:15:45,905
once. Yeah. Coming back to the economic incentives, I think there, there are people,

813
01:15:45,905 --> 01:15:51,285
you know, there, there's the ideological side. And I think there's ideological people on either

814
01:15:51,285 --> 01:15:54,145
side of this. And I don't want to talk specifically about like the debate on

815
01:15:54,145 --> 01:16:00,105
opportune, but speaking to minor specifically, there are people that really struggle with the

816
01:16:00,105 --> 01:16:09,785
idea that an economically rational actor could filter transactions that don't result in the

817
01:16:09,785 --> 01:16:20,485
largest amount of fees in an individual block. Not asking you to theorize on how your customers,

818
01:16:20,905 --> 01:16:27,025
the miners who do that think, but when you think about aligning the incentives between the pool

819
01:16:27,025 --> 01:16:33,065
and in miners, you're taking a share of that revenue for your service. So those economics

820
01:16:33,065 --> 01:16:39,145
impact you as well. So thinking about it from the pool perspective, how do you

821
01:16:39,145 --> 01:16:48,565
see the alignment of incentives vis-a-vis a minor to the pool where they might exclude certain

822
01:16:48,565 --> 01:16:54,065
transactions and not monetize a block as much as it could be like how do you think about that being

823
01:16:54,065 --> 01:17:01,745
in you know your collective you know when you look at everything in aggregate they're being

824
01:17:01,745 --> 01:17:09,685
full alignment. Right. Well, I think that, that the economic, uh, incentives is probably the most

825
01:17:09,685 --> 01:17:16,205
misunderstood part of ocean. There's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of discussions and online

826
01:17:16,205 --> 01:17:24,625
debates about, about, um, arbitrary data and the so-called revenue that it brings into the blockchain.

827
01:17:24,625 --> 01:17:33,025
um but that additional revenue is so minuscule compared to the money that miners are leaving on

828
01:17:33,025 --> 01:17:41,285
the table through fpps that it's like it's it's pennies on the dollar it's you know um

829
01:17:41,285 --> 01:17:46,725
and and it's pennies on the dollar the challenge is they can quantify the pennies and they can't

830
01:17:46,725 --> 01:17:51,285
quantify the dollars yeah but we are there's a lot of data that's coming out now like if you

831
01:17:51,285 --> 01:17:55,625
if you don't mine on FPPS and you mine on ocean,

832
01:17:55,765 --> 01:17:58,505
you could earn five to 10% more revenue,

833
01:17:59,065 --> 01:18:01,265
five to 10% more revenue,

834
01:18:01,265 --> 01:18:04,985
like multiply that by your business and the razor thin margins.

835
01:18:05,405 --> 01:18:09,805
That's a lot of money saving, you know, but the, the, the,

836
01:18:09,965 --> 01:18:13,185
and I think the work that we're doing is sort of Sean,

837
01:18:13,265 --> 01:18:18,805
a bit of a spotlight onto that and how FPPS is an unsustainable payout scheme

838
01:18:18,805 --> 01:18:21,025
and how it's an insurance. It's,

839
01:18:21,025 --> 01:18:23,485
it's an insurance product wrapped up as a mining pool,

840
01:18:23,545 --> 01:18:25,405
but it's really primarily an insurance product.

841
01:18:26,485 --> 01:18:31,485
So the fees, the fee discussion is compared to that.

842
01:18:31,805 --> 01:18:35,165
It's not even, it's not even in the same ballpark.

843
01:18:35,945 --> 01:18:39,425
So I would say to be a, to be,

844
01:18:39,525 --> 01:18:42,085
if you want to be economically rational

845
01:18:42,085 --> 01:18:45,085
and you want to maximize profits as a miner,

846
01:18:45,425 --> 01:18:47,545
you need to go directly to the wellhead.

847
01:18:47,625 --> 01:18:48,985
You need to go right to the source.

848
01:18:48,985 --> 01:18:53,285
And right now, ocean is the only pool that connects miners directly to the source.

849
01:18:53,485 --> 01:19:03,525
Whether you include something with a couple of more, you know, sats or a couple of fewer sats, it's like a rounding error and it doesn't have any material impact.

850
01:19:05,565 --> 01:19:12,085
But this is all part of the long, like, again, this is a your hash rate, your choice thing, right?

851
01:19:12,085 --> 01:19:18,865
Like we don't get in the way and miners make whatever choices they want, but we're all here for the long game of Bitcoin.

852
01:19:18,985 --> 01:19:21,965
which is like, as Bob Burnett likes to say,

853
01:19:22,045 --> 01:19:24,405
we're in year 15 of the next thousand years of money.

854
01:19:25,345 --> 01:19:29,785
And, and so we need to have like a long-term view

855
01:19:29,785 --> 01:19:31,545
and Bitcoin needs to survive

856
01:19:31,545 --> 01:19:34,285
and it needs to be adopted and used

857
01:19:34,285 --> 01:19:37,825
as a peer-to-peer payment system.

858
01:19:39,325 --> 01:19:41,705
Yeah, I think that that, you know,

859
01:19:41,705 --> 01:19:46,085
you know, thinking about it in the context of

860
01:19:46,085 --> 01:19:57,545
there's the, there's the fees and there are a lot of other variables that, that go along with it,

861
01:19:57,545 --> 01:20:07,525
that it's not like the alignment of interest is not just marginal fees. And that at the heart of

862
01:20:07,525 --> 01:20:15,025
what you guys are working on doing is putting miners in a position to

863
01:20:15,025 --> 01:20:24,565
being directly at the wellhead having more control seeding more control from the function of the pool

864
01:20:24,565 --> 01:20:31,785
in the broader context of bitcoin and decentralization and the integrity of the system

865
01:20:31,785 --> 01:20:39,665
how important do you think it is that the industry adopt something more like datum

866
01:20:39,665 --> 01:20:50,145
and the structure of ocean and its relationship to miners um like is it enough for

867
01:20:50,145 --> 01:20:55,045
ocean to say get five percent of the hash rate or ten percent of the hash rate

868
01:20:55,045 --> 01:21:01,965
if the other 90% is operating in a very centralized world.

869
01:21:02,985 --> 01:21:05,045
And so, yeah, that's just the question.

870
01:21:05,145 --> 01:21:08,245
Do you think that for the integrity of the system

871
01:21:08,245 --> 01:21:26,430
and for mining to truly decentralize that something like data needs to be adopted as a standard so looking at the bitcoin ecosystem i think 51 of the hash rate should be making their own blocks like that would be a really

872
01:21:26,430 --> 01:21:35,610
good target to have and that ensures bitcoin is uncensorable um it just so happens when you don't

873
01:21:35,610 --> 01:21:40,230
When you don't rely on FPPS, there's more money to be had.

874
01:21:40,870 --> 01:21:54,110
So I think miners who are seeking to maximize their revenue, it would be in their best interest to check it out and go directly to the wellhead.

875
01:21:54,790 --> 01:21:59,290
So I do feel for it's a competitive industry.

876
01:21:59,290 --> 01:22:04,390
It's in many cases really hard to make ends meet.

877
01:22:04,390 --> 01:22:10,190
And there's, you know, Bitcoin miners aren't the favorite type of customer from a utilities perspective.

878
01:22:10,350 --> 01:22:12,930
And so utilities are often very demanding in terms of.

879
01:22:13,270 --> 01:22:14,470
They should be, but they're not.

880
01:22:14,630 --> 01:22:15,630
They should be, but they're not.

881
01:22:15,790 --> 01:22:23,570
And they demand unreasonable utility deposits and miners have to pay their bills sometimes multiple times per month.

882
01:22:23,650 --> 01:22:27,930
And these kind of requirements aren't placed on any other industry.

883
01:22:27,930 --> 01:22:33,250
So it's a difficult business and cash flow is definitely important.

884
01:22:33,250 --> 01:22:44,730
And all I would I want to say and kind of reiterate is that there's there's more money to be had than what than what is being passed through the FPPS system.

885
01:22:45,990 --> 01:22:48,010
And that's by going directly to the source.

886
01:22:48,510 --> 01:22:49,730
As we get larger.

887
01:22:51,470 --> 01:22:57,830
The number of blocks that we find per day goes up, our coefficient, our coefficient of variance goes down.

888
01:22:57,830 --> 01:23:01,010
and at some point we're going to cross,

889
01:23:01,210 --> 01:23:03,530
we're going to sort of pass a critical threshold

890
01:23:03,530 --> 01:23:07,970
where there's really no risk to mining on ocean

891
01:23:07,970 --> 01:23:09,870
and it's all upside at that point.

892
01:23:10,330 --> 01:23:11,990
And I think we're actually really close to that.

893
01:23:12,910 --> 01:23:14,810
Most of the growth that we've seen so far

894
01:23:14,810 --> 01:23:19,190
has been organic growth through home miners,

895
01:23:19,330 --> 01:23:21,630
pleb miners, a few early adopters,

896
01:23:21,850 --> 01:23:23,210
but for the most part,

897
01:23:23,310 --> 01:23:25,750
the really large U.S. publicly traded companies

898
01:23:25,750 --> 01:23:30,630
are, um, they're not there yet, but, um, we're getting close.

899
01:23:30,630 --> 01:23:36,670
And, um, at some, at a very, at a point in the very near future, I think our, our hash

900
01:23:36,670 --> 01:23:42,670
rate's going to hit that inflection point where, um, the, the, the volatility aspect

901
01:23:42,670 --> 01:23:43,750
is not really a concern.

902
01:23:43,750 --> 01:23:47,010
And then, and it's just about, um, the money.

903
01:23:48,710 --> 01:23:54,650
One of the, one of the things that I think is important there is it's like, they're the

904
01:23:54,650 --> 01:24:02,610
economics of the the pplns and the fpps and you know there's in my mind there's no reason why

905
01:24:02,610 --> 01:24:08,170
if you want to fix payout that there can't be a financial service that sits on top of a pplns

906
01:24:08,170 --> 01:24:13,690
pool and basically says this is how the way the pool works but you individual miner want fixed

907
01:24:13,690 --> 01:24:21,450
payouts here's a cost from the pool's perspective and the integrity of you know thinking about the

908
01:24:21,450 --> 01:24:25,350
security business and i think that there's there's two ways to look at this which is when i

909
01:24:25,350 --> 01:24:32,310
was at unchained we looked at security of custody being people hold their own keys

910
01:24:32,310 --> 01:24:38,730
and we can help them but that was our our fundamental perspective on what

911
01:24:38,730 --> 01:24:45,650
results in greatest security if you come from a centralized world it's easier to do certain things

912
01:24:45,650 --> 01:24:52,710
when things are centralized you can pay out different ways and offer different services and

913
01:24:52,710 --> 01:24:59,890
if that is in your culture as a company then it's just well why would we do it some other way

914
01:24:59,890 --> 01:25:05,070
this makes other things so much easier less cost but

915
01:25:05,070 --> 01:25:12,650
the first question was on the minor side but this is on like to the pool industry to to your peers

916
01:25:12,650 --> 01:25:19,110
do you think from a security standpoint and i'm not talking about you know your bitcoin getting

917
01:25:19,110 --> 01:25:25,590
hacked or your data security but in terms of ensuring that that that phone call is not made

918
01:25:25,590 --> 01:25:33,130
that when people look at the landscape that it's also necessary to the pool ecosystem and i'm not

919
01:25:33,130 --> 01:25:39,250
just speaking of ocean but to you know thinking about all other pools that they put themselves

920
01:25:39,250 --> 01:25:48,150
in a position to not be able to be the ones creating templates oh absolutely when we um

921
01:25:48,150 --> 01:25:55,690
yeah like other pools and i strongly encourage other pools to either offer multiple templates

922
01:25:55,690 --> 01:26:00,870
to their for their miners to choose from so the miners have a choice or give the miners the ability

923
01:26:00,870 --> 01:26:07,470
to make their own in the datum software that we um open sourced and it's available on github

924
01:26:07,470 --> 01:26:13,390
you read through the documentation, it doesn't actually mention ocean in the document. It talks

925
01:26:13,390 --> 01:26:20,070
about being, being run with a datum supporting upstream pool. And so our vision is that in the

926
01:26:20,070 --> 01:26:27,650
future there, the goal is, the goal is to get mining decentralized at the pool level, whether

927
01:26:27,650 --> 01:26:33,790
that happens just through ocean or ocean and a bunch of other miners, mining pools, we got to

928
01:26:33,790 --> 01:26:39,670
get there because ultimately we have to protect our most valuable asset which is bitcoin and um

929
01:26:39,670 --> 01:26:45,150
we're all kind of like fighting for the same thing here so yeah i would love to see other pools adopt

930
01:26:45,150 --> 01:26:52,890
datum and use it and um and because that's going to get us to where we need to go faster but at the

931
01:26:52,890 --> 01:27:01,150
same time like i said before if everyone used ocean if every miner used ocean and it and everybody

932
01:27:01,150 --> 01:27:05,970
every miner made their own block templates there's no there's no central point of failure

933
01:27:05,970 --> 01:27:12,990
especially when you factor in the um the the block validation work that we're doing that that would

934
01:27:12,990 --> 01:27:19,230
allow minor a to validate minor b and vice versa there would be well what i would say is there's no

935
01:27:19,230 --> 01:27:24,550
way for somebody to influence what individual miners crave but somebody could call up ocean

936
01:27:24,550 --> 01:27:32,830
and or like seize your servers and then there would be miners being a very precarious position

937
01:27:32,830 --> 01:27:39,770
of not being able to to pull that is a good point so that is a that is an attack vector that we're

938
01:27:39,770 --> 01:27:45,310
not at yet but we should definitely and i'm sure lucas thought about this one yeah because he's

939
01:27:45,310 --> 01:27:51,870
always planning like 10 steps i think the best world would be many pools all using something that

940
01:27:51,870 --> 01:27:56,830
takes the control of the templates out of the hands.

941
01:27:56,970 --> 01:27:58,610
Not necessarily many pools.

942
01:27:58,950 --> 01:27:59,530
I'm not saying many pools,

943
01:27:59,610 --> 01:28:00,310
an infinite pools booth.

944
01:28:00,570 --> 01:28:01,490
That is one thing that,

945
01:28:01,490 --> 01:28:01,690
you know,

946
01:28:01,690 --> 01:28:04,490
someone like Elon Musk even misunderstands when he talks about how,

947
01:28:04,490 --> 01:28:05,010
you know,

948
01:28:05,030 --> 01:28:06,610
we need faster block times that the,

949
01:28:07,050 --> 01:28:09,910
that there was an intentionality in the,

950
01:28:09,910 --> 01:28:14,570
the target of 10 minutes in terms of security of the overall network and the

951
01:28:14,570 --> 01:28:19,750
rate of orphan blocks that then has this natural consequence of if there are

952
01:28:19,750 --> 01:28:25,830
only six blocks an hour and 144 blocks in a day and X blocks in a week.

953
01:28:25,830 --> 01:28:32,750
And you have expenses and working capital and cash flows that naturally to reduce

954
01:28:32,750 --> 01:28:36,090
variance, pulling resources is something that makes sense.

955
01:28:36,130 --> 01:28:43,130
And then within there, there's a big difference between two versus five versus

956
01:28:43,130 --> 01:28:44,130
10 versus 20.

957
01:28:44,170 --> 01:28:47,910
And there might be some limiting factor that says there probably won't be a

958
01:28:47,910 --> 01:28:55,890
thousand or thousands. But I think what you're saying is that if the role of the pool is

959
01:28:55,890 --> 01:29:03,910
less in terms of control, then to, to have effective decentralization,

960
01:29:04,410 --> 01:29:09,290
you still need many, but you don't need nearly as many.

961
01:29:09,290 --> 01:29:24,830
Yeah. And there's also a scenario, a possible future state where where data is, is the protocol that supports pools working together with each other.

962
01:29:24,830 --> 01:29:42,130
So instead of the pools fighting against each other to all find that those coveted minimum number of blocks every two weeks, if every pool aggregated their hash rate together, they would essentially share in the variance.

963
01:29:42,490 --> 01:29:44,750
If you're if you're 10 percent of the network.

964
01:29:45,010 --> 01:29:46,350
I don't know how that would work, but it's like a reinsurance.

965
01:29:47,010 --> 01:29:52,470
It's like, you know, there's a lot of proxy pools, white label proxy pools for Antpool.

966
01:29:52,470 --> 01:29:54,990
and they're all getting their funding from the same source.

967
01:29:55,690 --> 01:29:57,470
Well, if those proxy pools...

968
01:29:57,470 --> 01:29:57,650
And their templates.

969
01:29:58,410 --> 01:29:58,970
And their templates.

970
01:29:59,290 --> 01:30:02,750
If those proxy pools just did what they're currently doing,

971
01:30:02,850 --> 01:30:05,910
but they were on Ocean instead and they were running Datum,

972
01:30:06,430 --> 01:30:09,610
so think of Datum as not a pool but a protocol,

973
01:30:10,430 --> 01:30:14,150
then they could continue to be proxy pools serving their customers,

974
01:30:14,890 --> 01:30:17,150
but they would essentially,

975
01:30:17,370 --> 01:30:20,050
if two pools with identical size were on the pool,

976
01:30:20,050 --> 01:30:23,310
were both using data, I'm splitting rewards,

977
01:30:23,830 --> 01:30:26,050
they would each find twice as many blocks

978
01:30:26,050 --> 01:30:26,950
at half the value.

979
01:30:27,650 --> 01:30:29,930
And if a third large proxy pool joined,

980
01:30:30,450 --> 01:30:32,710
it would lower the burden for everybody else.

981
01:30:33,050 --> 01:30:35,850
So when I say 100% of the network,

982
01:30:36,010 --> 01:30:38,010
part of that future state could be,

983
01:30:38,430 --> 01:30:39,470
there are many pools,

984
01:30:40,110 --> 01:30:42,030
but they're all working together collaboratively

985
01:30:42,030 --> 01:30:43,510
as opposed to opposed to each other.

986
01:30:44,450 --> 01:30:48,810
And I think that's an unstoppable Bitcoin in the future.

987
01:30:50,050 --> 01:31:00,250
Alright, last question. You know, obviously I know what you're doing to help foster decentralization in Bitcoin and mining, but

988
01:31:02,050 --> 01:31:12,295
when you think about the incentives not just aligning incentives that you know the ultimate integrity of Bitcoin

989
01:31:12,295 --> 01:31:15,435
is what's most important,

990
01:31:15,535 --> 01:31:16,375
but everyone also,

991
01:31:16,535 --> 01:31:19,535
because if it didn't have integrity,

992
01:31:19,895 --> 01:31:23,175
then everyone's assets lose value.

993
01:31:23,695 --> 01:31:26,475
But that individual interests,

994
01:31:26,815 --> 01:31:28,215
it's like balancing short-term interests,

995
01:31:28,215 --> 01:31:29,335
long-term interests,

996
01:31:29,335 --> 01:31:32,135
and balancing individual interests.

997
01:31:32,215 --> 01:31:34,015
There's not really even balancing individual interests

998
01:31:34,015 --> 01:31:36,295
with the network interests,

999
01:31:36,395 --> 01:31:38,955
but the marrying of those two,

1000
01:31:39,095 --> 01:31:40,135
that they're one in the same.

1001
01:31:42,155 --> 01:31:45,235
What do you think, like five years from now,

1002
01:31:45,935 --> 01:31:48,235
what do you think the mining pool landscape looks like?

1003
01:31:48,635 --> 01:31:53,915
And what do you think the incentive

1004
01:31:53,915 --> 01:31:58,135
that tips the scale away from that overcorrection

1005
01:31:58,135 --> 01:32:00,335
and reliance on FPPS?

1006
01:32:00,475 --> 01:32:02,975
Do you think that it's just one miner

1007
01:32:02,975 --> 01:32:04,375
figuring it out after the other

1008
01:32:04,375 --> 01:32:08,215
or is it a materialization of the risk?

1009
01:32:08,395 --> 01:32:10,815
Is it a financial distress?

1010
01:32:11,255 --> 01:32:14,415
You know, like how do you see us going from

1011
01:32:14,415 --> 01:32:16,655
and what's the kind of leading driving factor

1012
01:32:16,655 --> 01:32:19,275
that says like this is what miners figured out

1013
01:32:19,275 --> 01:32:23,475
and realized that they needed, you know,

1014
01:32:23,475 --> 01:32:27,335
a combination of more options as well as more control?

1015
01:32:28,135 --> 01:32:30,075
Future in five years, I think.

1016
01:32:30,815 --> 01:32:33,915
I think it's defined by three changes.

1017
01:32:34,575 --> 01:32:41,295
I think we're going to have proxy pools collaborating, like we just talked about, using Datum.

1018
01:32:42,495 --> 01:32:45,655
And so pools become collaborators rather than competitors.

1019
01:32:48,875 --> 01:32:53,915
We're going to have a decentralized version of FPPS because we're building it.

1020
01:32:54,175 --> 01:32:56,835
So maybe we can chat sometime next year.

1021
01:32:56,835 --> 01:32:57,215
Good to know.

1022
01:32:58,135 --> 01:33:02,355
Um, the money doesn't have, there's more than two entities in the world with Bitcoin.

1023
01:33:02,575 --> 01:33:03,015
Yeah.

1024
01:33:03,015 --> 01:33:10,455
Every Bitcoin that I did the math that the whole network could like three standard deviations

1025
01:33:10,455 --> 01:33:13,555
would like take 2000 Bitcoin or something.

1026
01:33:13,755 --> 01:33:15,955
And there's 19.9 million Bitcoin out there.

1027
01:33:16,055 --> 01:33:20,535
So, so all the money, all the block subsidies that get paid to all the miners in the world

1028
01:33:20,535 --> 01:33:21,875
come from two pairs of hands.

1029
01:33:22,475 --> 01:33:25,595
We can, we can spread that out a little bit.

1030
01:33:25,595 --> 01:33:30,775
But you need a transparent system and a permissionless system to do it.

1031
01:33:31,275 --> 01:33:32,075
So we're building that.

1032
01:33:33,755 --> 01:33:43,715
And in five years, I think our perspective on the value of a block is going to be radically different as well.

1033
01:33:45,015 --> 01:33:45,775
What do you mean by that?

1034
01:33:46,075 --> 01:33:50,175
Well, I credit this way of thinking to Bob Burnett from Barefoot.

1035
01:33:50,175 --> 01:34:02,155
But when we think about the value of a block today, you look at how many transactions there are in the block and the fees, and you add it to the subsidy, and then that's the value of the block.

1036
01:34:02,695 --> 01:34:05,135
That's like a one-dimensional way of thinking.

1037
01:34:05,255 --> 01:34:18,335
But I think in the future, if we have hyper-Bitcoinization and you have institutions all competing for block space, the block space scarcity is going to become a real issue.

1038
01:34:18,335 --> 01:34:25,035
and then the value of a block is shifted to who actually makes the block.

1039
01:34:25,555 --> 01:34:31,155
Because right now there are two pools that make majority of blocks for every miner in the world.

1040
01:34:32,155 --> 01:34:41,295
And if you have settlement on chain for large international deals and procurement

1041
01:34:41,295 --> 01:34:54,995
and there's other external factors that are riding on a Bitcoin transaction getting into the layer one settlement.

1042
01:34:55,515 --> 01:35:02,255
There's like secondary effects and secondary opportunity costs that need to be considered.

1043
01:35:02,255 --> 01:35:05,175
So I think and I think the.

1044
01:35:06,095 --> 01:35:17,495
The prominence of of running a block for the sake of getting to populate it with your own transactions is going to be very valuable to miners in the future.

1045
01:35:17,715 --> 01:35:21,555
And it's it's something that very few people are talking about now.

1046
01:35:23,055 --> 01:35:25,155
And that's something you can do today with Ocean.

1047
01:35:25,335 --> 01:35:30,995
You can create your own block template and you can put your own transactions in there at no cost.

1048
01:35:30,995 --> 01:35:36,215
and there's not a high degree of demand for block space right now so it's not that

1049
01:35:36,215 --> 01:35:41,555
big of a deal but when there is an insane amount of demand of competition for block space

1050
01:35:41,555 --> 01:35:46,555
um and you can't get your transaction and you need to get it in because you

1051
01:35:46,555 --> 01:35:53,335
you have to make payment in order for a deal to close and the penalty for not paying that is x

1052
01:35:53,335 --> 01:35:59,655
million dollars now the value to you of that block is now all of those external factors so i think i

1053
01:35:59,655 --> 01:36:06,735
think we're going to go from a single dimensional um assessment of of the value of a block to

1054
01:36:06,735 --> 01:36:10,935
three-dimensional assessment with multiple factors and i think it's going to happen quickly

1055
01:36:10,935 --> 01:36:15,335
yeah i've talked about about that and i want to have him on hopefully in the next few weeks

1056
01:36:15,335 --> 01:36:21,455
job of explaining it than i just did like my view of that piece is that like there is going to be

1057
01:36:21,455 --> 01:36:26,555
this if you imagine eight billion people using bitcoin there's going to be fierce competition

1058
01:36:26,555 --> 01:36:33,335
for block space is going to have to be serious innovation in terms of you know scaling value per

1059
01:36:33,335 --> 01:36:42,095
unit settled on chain and that there is going to be a desire to you know have still have higher

1060
01:36:42,095 --> 01:36:47,975
value transactions that are time sensitive i feel like there's going to inevitably have to be some

1061
01:36:47,975 --> 01:36:53,615
financial solution to that of like because you don't know what pool or what miner is going to

1062
01:36:53,615 --> 01:36:58,895
solve a block so how can you guarantee block space but i think there's there's going to be

1063
01:36:58,895 --> 01:37:06,215
markets that emerge that will benefit um miners one thing that i've thought about i'm curious if

1064
01:37:06,215 --> 01:37:11,135
you think that the world might go this way do you see large miners like miners always have like a

1065
01:37:11,135 --> 01:37:16,295
backup to you know if something happens with their pool to change and we talked before about

1066
01:37:16,295 --> 01:37:23,295
why when it when it really might matter you functionally even if you could change

1067
01:37:23,295 --> 01:37:28,835
you know the other pools might be censoring too but specifically do you think there might be a

1068
01:37:28,835 --> 01:37:33,635
trend of large miners not just having a backup pool but actually splitting their hash rate

1069
01:37:33,635 --> 01:37:42,635
and saying i'm going to send 25 my percent of my hash rate to um and an f or not just an fpps pool

1070
01:37:42,635 --> 01:37:47,355
but like to send something like foundry and i'm going to send 25 of my hash rate to

1071
01:37:47,355 --> 01:37:55,815
the ocean or or other pools because they recognize hey not only is it not in my best interest to just

1072
01:37:55,815 --> 01:38:03,555
have one supplier but rather than just a fallback i can actually point and then through that process

1073
01:38:03,555 --> 01:38:08,615
they can test that they can they can start to quantify the the differences in pools like do you

1074
01:38:08,615 --> 01:38:17,115
see that as a trend i do um it's happening i know i know uh several miners who it's like just

1075
01:38:17,115 --> 01:38:24,615
baked into their diversification strategy to mine on multiple pools. And part of it is

1076
01:38:24,615 --> 01:38:32,195
they're doing their fiduciary duty of maximizing revenue. So they have to run the test to have the

1077
01:38:32,195 --> 01:38:37,755
data to support their choice in the pool. And others are doing it just for that very reason of

1078
01:38:37,755 --> 01:38:46,455
not letting any one pool get too big. So I think it's going to, and it should continue like that.

1079
01:38:46,455 --> 01:38:53,635
And it would be ideal if the backup pool also gave miners the ability to make their own templates.

1080
01:38:53,975 --> 01:38:59,055
Because at that point, all the backups are great.

1081
01:38:59,155 --> 01:39:07,875
But right now, a lot of common configuration for Ocean is when you run Datum, you're running a local Stratum server.

1082
01:39:08,515 --> 01:39:10,775
So the hardware is on-premises.

1083
01:39:10,775 --> 01:39:15,615
Sometimes some miners do it in the cloud, but the majority do it on-prem.

1084
01:39:16,455 --> 01:39:25,435
And if anything happens to your server, pool two in your ASIC interface is just our template, which is mine.ocean.xyz.

1085
01:39:25,975 --> 01:39:28,295
And then so you have a failback and then.

1086
01:39:29,415 --> 01:39:39,715
You know, if you wanted a third failback, you can pick another pool as well, but you at least with Ocean, you have the primary and the backup all baked into the datum and the centralized option.

1087
01:39:41,315 --> 01:39:43,835
All right, Mark, I appreciate you.

1088
01:39:43,995 --> 01:39:45,135
Well, glad that you're in Austin.

1089
01:39:45,235 --> 01:39:45,815
Good to see you.

1090
01:39:45,955 --> 01:39:46,115
Yeah.

1091
01:39:46,115 --> 01:39:57,235
Um, if a miner is interested in ocean, they reach out on the website, reach out direct to Nacho, where do they go?

1092
01:39:58,235 --> 01:40:01,295
Yeah, uh, we have, we have a few, a few different ways.

1093
01:40:01,435 --> 01:40:05,855
Um, our, our general mailbox is mining at ocean.xyz.

1094
01:40:05,915 --> 01:40:07,695
That's a great way to reach out to us.

1095
01:40:07,875 --> 01:40:11,575
And you can also contact any, any one of our sales team.

1096
01:40:11,575 --> 01:40:13,955
So I'm Mark, everything we get really simple email.

1097
01:40:13,955 --> 01:40:19,835
So mark at ocean.xyz, nacho at ocean.xyz or lily at ocean.xyz.

1098
01:40:20,155 --> 01:40:20,575
Awesome.

1099
01:40:21,115 --> 01:40:24,315
And Luke and mechanic are easy to find as well.

1100
01:40:25,075 --> 01:40:29,795
They might filter you if you spam them.

1101
01:40:30,435 --> 01:40:33,095
But no, I really do appreciate you.

1102
01:40:33,475 --> 01:40:39,095
It was great to meet in May at the Energy Mining Summit.

1103
01:40:39,235 --> 01:40:40,775
We're going to do another one here next year.

1104
01:40:40,775 --> 01:40:43,375
And yeah, I appreciate what you guys are doing.

1105
01:40:43,375 --> 01:40:44,015
at Ocean.

1106
01:40:44,015 --> 01:40:44,915
Yeah, thanks for the support.

1107
01:40:45,315 --> 01:40:46,075
Thanks for having us on.

1108
01:40:46,435 --> 01:40:47,335
Yeah, thanks for coming.