Seven leading Bitcoin mining companies have joined the working group to accelerate the adoption of the Stratum V2 protocol.
On May 7, 2026, the Stratum V2 Working Group announced the addition of seven new members: Antpool, Block Inc, F2Pool, Foundry, Spider Pool, MARA Foundation, and DMND. The inclusion of these operators—key players in the mining ecosystem—marks a significant step toward achieving widespread adoption of the Stratum V2 protocol as an open industry standard.
The working group, established in 2022 by Brains and Spiral, aims to develop and maintain Stratum V2 as an open, vendor-neutral standard for the entire Bitcoin mining ecosystem. This protocol is an upgrade to the original Stratum, introducing significant improvements in efficiency, privacy, security, and functionality that directly impact mining decentralization.
Key features of Stratum V2 include: support for more efficient management of large-scale mining clusters, end-to-end encryption, and the ability for individual miners to independently construct their own block templates. This last feature is considered particularly important for reducing centralization in block construction, with support from participating pools.
Andy Zhou, CEO of Antpool, commented on the membership issue: "We are honored to support the broader adoption of Stratum V2. Collaborating around open, interoperable standards enables the industry to work more effectively and drives improvements in efficiency, security, and decentralization." Kenway Wang, CTO of Spiderpool, added: "Decentralization is at the core of our mission. Stratum V2 supports this vision by enabling miners to build their own templates, while also improving efficiency—particularly for miners operating in bandwidth-constrained environments."