Seven of the leading Bitcoin mining players join the working group to accelerate adoption of the Stratum V2 protocol.
The Stratum V2 Working Group announced on May 7, 2026 the addition of seven new members: Antpool, Block Inc, F2Pool, Foundry, Spiderpool, MARA Foundation and DMND. The joining of these operators – all major players in the mining ecosystem – represents a significant step toward large-scale adoption of the Stratum V2 protocol as an open standard for the industry.
The working group was founded in 2022 by Braiins and Spiral with the goal of developing and maintaining Stratum V2 as an open, vendor-neutral specification, usable by the entire Bitcoin mining ecosystem. The protocol is an upgrade over the original Stratum, introducing substantial improvements in terms of efficiency, privacy, security and functionality, with a direct impact on mining decentralization.
Among its key features, Stratum V2 supports mechanisms for more efficient management of large miner fleets, implements end-to-end encryption, and allows individual miners to independently build their own block templates, with the support of participating pools. This last feature is considered particularly relevant for reducing centralization in block construction.
Andy Zhou, CEO of Antpool, commented on the membership by stating: “We are proud to support the wider adoption of Stratum V2. Aligning around an open, interoperable standard allows the industry to collaborate more effectively and drive improvements in efficiency, security and decentralization.” Kenway Wang, CTO of Spiderpool, added: “Decentralization is at the core of our mission. Stratum V2 supports it by enabling miner-built templates, while also improving efficiency, particularly for miners in bandwidth-limited environments.”
