The session at Mining Disrupt, recorded March 25–27, 2025, opened with a joke. Nico Moran, CEO of Simply Bitcoin, said Dashjr had told him earlier that it "can't be a fireside chat if there's no fire," and Dashjr confirmed it, so Moran settled for just a chat. At the time of the recording, Bitcoin was trading at $87,393.
Luke Dashjr, Distinguished Software Engineer at Ocean, has been working on Bitcoin since early 2011. Moran noted that Jack Dorsey has called him the guardian of Bitcoin. Dashjr’s core argument was that the decentralization of Bitcoin mining has reached a critical state. Specifically, he noted that one entity controls over 40% of the network, and another large pool's share was, in his words, way too high. This centralization, he argued, undermines the security assumptions in the white paper.
The Crisis of Confirmation
Moran asked Dashjr what motivated the relaunch of Ocean, a project that had existed in some form since 2011 under the name Eligius. Dashjr said the first version was "pretty much just because I could," while the relaunch was driven by how severe mining centralization had become. He pointed to the changing nature of transaction confirmation. The white paper suggests six blocks for security, but with centralized hash power, that assumption no longer holds. With hashrate as concentrated as it is, he said, being secure takes 12 blocks with the largest pool on the network, and if a single pool grows big enough, a whole week.
Rethinking the Pool: Solo Mining with Shared Economics
The solution Dashjr proposed through Ocean is a rethinking of the pool itself. Traditional pools use a method known as Full Pay Per Share (FPPS), which pays miners for every share of work they submit, regardless of whether the pool finds a block. This removes the lottery element of mining, providing consistent income, but it also removes the miner's direct connection to the blockchain. The pool becomes the miner; the individual operator is merely a contributor to a centralized entity.
the decentralization issue with Bitcoin mining has become so severe.
Luke Dashjr · 1:59
Ocean operates differently. It uses a protocol that allows miners to connect their hardware to their own full nodes, which then communicate with the Ocean infrastructure only for payout coordination. The miners are building their own blocks. They are, in Dashjr's terms, solo miners who have agreed to share rewards. This structure preserves the decentralization of block creation while offering the economic stability of a pool.
They're essentially solo miners, but they're still getting the shared economics of a pool.
Luke Dashjr · 3:17
Dashjr noted that 75% of Ocean's hash rate comes from solo miners who are making their own blocks. He said Ocean had just reached about 6 exahashes and was finding about one block a day.
The Math Behind the Failure Probability
Perhaps the most provocative claim in the session was Dashjr's assessment of Bitcoin's chances of survival. Asked about a 50% estimate, he said he would not even put it that high. Another developer had put it at 3 or 4%, he said, and was probably not far off. Back in 2013, he added, the odds were probably over 50%.
most people don't realize the probability of Bitcoin succeeding as a decentralized currency is well under 50%.
Luke Dashjr · 5:56
The math behind this pessimism lies in the vulnerability of the network to attacks. Dashjr explained that a 51% attack, the theoretical threshold for seizing control of the blockchain, is not the only danger. It is possible to execute a successful attack with significantly less than half of the network's hash rate. The 51% figure is simply the point where success is guaranteed; below that, success is still possible, just with a higher probability of failure.
You can do it with 30 even 20%.
Luke Dashjr · 9:17
This reality undermines the security assumptions that many users and merchants rely on. If the network is centralized, the guarantee that there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins is at the mercy of the central entities controlling the hash power. Without a decentralized enforcement mechanism, the rules of the protocol can be bent or broken by those with the most computational power.
Incentives and the Role of Nodes
Moran pressed Dashjr on the economic trade-offs. The FPPS model offers insurance against the variance of block discovery, but it comes at the cost of a lower hash price, as the pool must cover the risk. Ocean, by contrast, exposes miners to the natural variance of Bitcoin mining. There are days when no blocks are found and rewards are zero, and days when multiple blocks are found, resulting in windfalls. Dashjr argued that, over time, this direct exposure to the reward yields better returns because it removes the middleman margin.
The incentive structure is also designed to reward decentralization. Ocean offers a lower fee for miners who make their own blocks, creating a financial incentive to adopt the more secure, decentralized model. This aligns the economic interests of the miners with the security interests of the network. The goal is to create a virtuous cycle where the most profitable way to mine is also the most secure way to mine.
While mining pool centralization is a critical issue, Dashjr identified node centralization as an even more profound risk. He emphasized that it is not enough for miners to decentralize their hash power; users must also decentralize their validation. He argued that the protocol's rules are only enforced when users validate transactions on their own full nodes.
It's not enough that people can run a full node. People actually need to choose to run a full node.
Luke Dashjr · 14:44
Dashjr noted that the number of full nodes has not kept pace with the growth in Bitcoin usage. For the network to be truly safe, he suggested that at least 85% of economic activity should be conducted by users who are self-custodying and validating on their own nodes.
He also criticized the growth of the blockchain due to features like Ordinals, which he argued increase the resource requirements for running a full node, thereby raising the barrier to entry and further centralizing the validation process. Dashjr has been an advocate for smaller blocks for years, arguing that the current block sizes outpace the rate of improvement in consumer hardware, such as CPUs and solid-state drives.
The discussion concluded with a reflection on the future. Dashjr stated that Bitcoin is the only viable alternative to a collapsing fiat system, and that his motivation is driven by a desire to leave a functioning economy for his eleven children. When this session was recorded, Bitcoin traded at $87,393; on October 13, 2026 it was $83,491.