Blockstream, the blockchain and bitcoin development company, today revealed one of its biggest product launches to date: Blockstream Mining. It will provide mining equipment colocation in a purpose-built data center designed to meet the needs of institutional and enterprise customers. The mining colocation service supports the fast deployment of virtually any type of Bitcoin mining equipment and provides customers with complete control over their mining operations.
Begun in 2017
Blockstream informed that they began Bitcoin mining operations back in 2017 motivated by widespread concern that mining decentralization was declining. At the time it appeared that parties involved in ASIC manufacture, hosting, and pool operations were becoming a centralizing force and holding back Bitcoin from reaching its full potential.
Since then Blockstream has scaled up operations, secured additional sources of power, and expanded service to provide hosting to clients that include the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
The firm also reported managing a self-mining operation, which represents less than 1% of the global hash rate, running on a combination of hardware from Bitfury, Ebang, MicroBT, and other manufacturers.
Enterprise Colocation
The Blockstream Mining colocation service provides a turnkey solution for businesses to operate and remotely manage their mining equipment:
- Logistics: Can help arrange the international logistics to ensure safe shipment of mining equipment to Blockstream facilities.
- Installation: The facilities’ power and networking infrastructure have been custom-built for fast deployment and maximum reliability.
- Operation: Miners can be managed remotely via the Blockstream Mining control panel, delivering real-time analytics and control over each device’s operation.
- Support: On-site technicians will keep miners running and promptly deal with any updates or maintenance when required.
Blockstream Pool
Alongside the Bitcoin mining colocation service, Blockstream is also launching, Blockstream Pool, a production mining pool utilizing the BetterHash protocol. BetterHash is a mining pool protocol that gives individual miners the ability to control which Bitcoin transactions to include in their newly mined blocks. As a result, the Bitcoin network becomes more decentralized and censorship-resistant as operators of large pools no longer centrally determine which transactions to include into blocks.
The Blockstream Pool has been running on testnet for over a year and is initially available to Blockstream Mining customers. Blockstream declared that it plans to expand to a wider audience over time as they continue to work towards further decentralization.