OCEAN's next chapter Bitcoin mining and block template construction have become concentrated in a small number of pools. When a handful of operators can decide which transactions make it into blocks, Bitcoin's censorship resistance increasingly depends on their goodwill rather than the design of the network. That is a security problem. We exist to fix it. What we're building. We built DATUM to put block template construction back in miners' hands. It is open source on the client side and will be open source on the pool side early next year. We will continue our effort integrating Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, for trustless payouts and for encouraging compatibility with the best available standards, features, tools. We will work with miners, partners, other pools, and protocol developers (like SV2) to make decentralization a priority for the next era of Bitcoin mining. Building your own template, permissionlessly, provides sovereignty to miners. Freedom to choose which transactions to include empowers all miners to act as a gateway for the free market to Bitcoin's blockspace. And doing it all locally on your own node cuts down bandwidth requirements enormously, while the TIDES payment system provides more direct exposure to the upside. More independent miners, making more independent decisions, using less bandwidth, and earning more Bitcoin (3.6% more on OCEAN in 2025, to be precise). Where we stand. Our pool remains on SHA-256. We are not adopting any proof-of-work change. To our miners. Nothing changes for you. Service and support continue uninterrupted. Nacho Pauls remains your first point of contact. The next chapter starts now. Let’s build! 🌊