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For over a decade, Bitcoin mining pools have quietly held one of the most consequential powers in the network: deciding which transactions get included in blocks. That era just got its first real crack.
DMND, the world’s first native Stratum V2 mining pool, successfully mined Bitcoin block 955,318 on June 25, 2026. The block was constructed by GoMining using Stratum V2’s Job Declaration feature, making it the first documented instance of a miner independently building its own block template in a production environment.
Why this block is different from every block before it
When the original Stratum protocol (now called V1) was introduced in 2012, it created a model where mining pools, not individual miners, decided which transactions went into blocks. Miners contributed hash power and received payouts, but they had zero say in what actually got built.
Stratum V2 flips that dynamic. Miners can now propose their own block templates to the pool for validation, rather than blindly accepting whatever the pool hands them. The pool still coordinates payouts and smooths revenue, but the miner gets to choose which transactions to include.
GoMining exercised exactly this capability with block 955,318. The company used its GoBTC Pay instant payments protocol, which is open-source, to construct the block’s template entirely independently of DMND’s selection process. The pool validated and accepted the template, and the block was mined.
This matters for a reason that goes beyond technical elegance. When a handful of large pools control transaction selection for the majority of Bitcoin’s hash rate, they become potential chokepoints for censorship. With Stratum V2’s Job Declaration, that pressure point gets distributed across thousands of individual miners instead of concentrated in a few pool operators.
DMND and the Stratum V2 ecosystem
DMND was announced in March 2025 following venture capital investments, positioning itself as the first mining pool built natively on Stratum V2 rather than retrofitting the protocol onto existing infrastructure.
Beyond Job Declaration, the pool offers end-to-end encryption between miners and the pool server, reducing the risk of hash rate hijacking. DMND also claims to reduce bandwidth usage by approximately 60-70% compared to Stratum V1. The pool uses a SLICE payout system while maintaining the revenue-smoothing benefits that make pooled mining attractive.
DMND isn’t entirely alone in the Stratum V2 space. Braiins Pool has also adopted elements of the protocol. On the hardware side, Auradine shipped the first native Stratum V2 ASIC miner, giving the ecosystem a dedicated hardware pathway rather than relying on firmware workarounds.
The protocol itself has been developed by Jan Capek, Pavel Moravec, and Matt Corallo, with community contributions and support from organizations like OpenSats.
What this means for investors and the mining landscape
Block 955,318 is proof of concept in the most literal sense possible. Stratum V2’s Job Declaration feature works in production.
The bandwidth reduction is worth watching. A 60-70% decrease in data transmission between miners and pools lowers operating costs, particularly for large-scale operations where connectivity expenses add up.
The risk, as with any protocol transition, is adoption speed. Stratum V1 has been the standard for 14 years. Pools, firmware developers, and hardware manufacturers all need to support V2 for the shift to reach critical mass. DMND mining a single block is a milestone, but the protocol needs sustained adoption across a meaningful share of Bitcoin’s hash rate before its censorship-resistance benefits materialize at the network level.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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