Seven major pools join Stratum V2 — miners gain the ability to choose transactions

Seven major pools have joined the Stratum V2 working group, representing approximately 75% of Bitcoin’s total hashrate. The announcement comes from the team behind the protocol and is key to rolling out Stratum V2’s new capabilities (Stratum V2 working group announcement).

The confirmed facts

Stratum V2 introduces an architecture that lets individual miners choose which transactions to include in blocks, instead of the traditional model in which the pool builds the block template. Bringing seven major pools into the working group means this change is not merely conceptual — participants who represent a significant share of the network hashrate are working to put it into practice.

What changes for miners

The practical effect: miners will gain real control over transaction selection and block templates. That means decisions about which transactions to include and how to prioritise fees can be taken individually by the operators of mining machines. For the pools, the next step is to offer tools and interfaces that let miners build their own blocks within the pool’s infrastructure.

In economic terms, handing that power to miners could change the structure of fee revenue — miners will optimise for more profitable transactions, which will put pressure on traditional revenue-distribution methods and on the pools’ software stack.

The Bitminers assessment: the most important point for operators and buyers of mining machines is that Stratum V2 is not merely a technology option — it changes who takes the decisions about what goes into a block. Operators and software vendors should plan updates that support transaction selection and miner-facing interfaces, because fee economics will follow these technical changes.