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BITCOIN

Bitcoin miners counter centralization with fast relays and solar power

Monday, March 30, 2026 · from 2 podcasts
Plebchain RadioBitcoin Optech
  • The Fiber Network relaunched to give small miners equal block speed, countering large pools' private relay advantage.
  • Mining with solar power enables a new kind of energy and monetary sovereignty, akin to early off-grid pioneers.
  • The mining community split when buying bitcoin became easier than producing it, weakening production-side knowledge.

Bitcoin mining is fighting its centralization problem on two fronts: speed and sovereignty.

On the speed front, large mining pools use private relay networks to see new blocks faster, giving them a critical advantage. Smaller miners, left with the standard peer-to-peer network, waste hash power mining stale data. The Fiber Network, relaunched in beta, is a public, high-speed relay layer designed to level that playing field.

It doesn't replace Bitcoin’s base network but supplements it, using UDP and forward error correction to stream blocks instantly between high-bandwidth peers. According to Bitcoin Optech, this acts as a global "low-latency highway" that lets edge miners compete fairly, which is essential for emerging decentralized protocols like Stratum V2.

Instagibs, Bitcoin Optech:

- You can think of the fiber network essentially as one big node that has multiple IP addresses in different regions.

- It synchronizes block and transaction data as quickly as possible between the instances and disseminates it to the peers it's connected to from all of these IP addresses.

The sovereignty front is ideological. Kent Halliburton, CEO of Saz Mining, argues on Plebchain Radio that the Bitcoin community fractured when buying coins became easier than producing them. The "purchasers" went one way, while the "hashpunk" producers, who hold the tools to mint money, went another.

Halliburton sees solar power and Bitcoin mining as structurally similar decentralized industries. Both rely on Chinese hardware and are constrained by energy networks. He compares today's solar-powered miners to the 1970s Northern California cannabis growers who were the first adopters of rooftop solar - they weren't environmentalists, they sought off-grid sovereignty.

Kent Halliburton, Plebchain Radio:

- As long as you have electricity, hardware, and an internet connection, you can generate your own sats and have a decentralized money printer working for you.

- I find the politicization of it and the tribalism around it to be a distraction from the sovereignty it provides.

Together, these efforts represent a push to reclaim the forge. It’s not just about profit margins; it’s about ensuring the power to produce money isn’t handed to a centralized few.

MiningAdoptionProtocol

Source Intelligence

What each podcast actually said

Plebchain Radio
Plebchain Radio

157 – Where the Wild Sats Live with Kent Halliburton • Mar 27

  • Early Bitcoin acquisition required running software and contributing energy, forging coins through production.
  • Halliburton says the community split into 'purchasers' and 'producers' when buying Bitcoin became easier than mining it.
  • Halliburton describes the mining side as 'hashpunk' and the decentralized ledger side as 'cypherpunk'.
  • With electricity, hardware, and internet, you can generate sats with a decentralized money printer, says Halliburton.
  • Halliburton sees solar power and Bitcoin mining as structurally similar, decentralized, hardware-driven industries.
  • Both solar and mining rely on hardware from China and are constrained by energy network realities.
  • Halliburton views Bitcoin mining as a 'zero to one' innovation enabling a full exit from the fiat system.

Also from this episode:

Society (2)
  • Kent Halliburton argues the shift from producing to consuming food and money has cost us sovereignty.
  • A community that produces its own money holds a different kind of power than one that merely accumulates it.
Energy (4)
  • The first rooftop solar panels in the 1970s were sold to off-grid cannabis growers, making sovereignty the core feature.
  • Falling battery costs are making true energy sovereignty possible again, providing a model for mining.
  • Solar makes sense to Halliburton because it's the only way to make electricity without moving anything.
  • Halliburton finds the politicization and tribalism around solar a distraction from the sovereignty it provides.
MiningEnergyAdoptionBTC Markets
Bitcoin Optech
Bitcoin Optech

Bitcoin Optech: Newsletter #397 Recap • Mar 24

  • The Fiber Network, a low-latency public block relay system, has relaunched in beta to help small and medium-sized miners receive blocks faster, countering the centralizing advantage of large pools that use private relay networks.
  • The original Fiber system was built by Blue Matt years ago and has now been rebased and revitalized by developers including localhost to support modern mining decentralization pushes, according to the Bitcoin Optech summary.
  • Fiber's core goal is fairness in mining competition by ensuring all miners have equal access to the latest block information, thereby reducing the hash power wasted by miners who lag in seeing new blocks and mine on stale chain tips.
  • The network runs alongside but does not replace Bitcoin's standard peer-to-peer layer; it uses UDP and forward error correction to create a high-speed streaming mesh for block data between participating high-bandwidth nodes.
  • Fiber acts as a self-optimizing mesh where nodes that consistently relay blocks early earn a 'high-bandwidth' status, creating a global low-latency highway that Instagibs describes as 'one big node that has multiple IP addresses in different regions.'
  • The system is designed to be externally invisible; nodes look like regular peers to the rest of the network but internally sync block and transaction data as quickly as possible between their distributed instances before disseminating it.
  • Fiber's relaunch is particularly timely due to 2025 challenges like mempool fragmentation from low-fee transactions and content filtering, which slowed standard block propagation and amplified the need for a fast relay solution.
  • The network is critical for supporting emerging, more decentralized mining protocols like Stratum V2 and Braid Pool, which rely on edge-based block construction and therefore require miners to receive blocks with minimal latency.
  • Fiber remains in beta partly because opening it to thousands of unmanaged inbound connections could degrade performance; future plans may involve using border nodes to filter traffic while maintaining open access.
MiningProtocolAdoptionBTC Markets

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