Creating a new mining pool will only benefit the bitcoin ecosystem as a whole in the end. More decentralization can only be a good thing, which is what most mining pool operators try to achieve. However, in the case of the “new” Canoepool, things are a bit different. It would appear this service is operated by the same team who runs the ViaBTC mining pool.
CanoePool is Not What It Seems
When a mining pool operator creates a new pool, they are not necessarily improving the mining decentralization process by any means. Instead, they create the illusion of there being two separate and independent mining pools while that is not the case. In the end, this type of trickery is not appreciated by bitcoin community members as it serves no purpose whatsoever.
Big was people’s surprise when they found out a newly launched bitcoin mining pool was supporting Bitcoin Unlimited all of a sudden. While that is not that strange in its own right, it is evident Canoepool is not an independent mining pool whatsoever. Instead, it is operated by the same people running ViaBTC, the largest BU mining pool right now.
A new #bitcoin pool called CANOE was found signalling @BitcoinUnlimit with its 22P hashrate.https://t.co/Ow7QxOUK7E pic.twitter.com/P5fi7erYrJ
— cnLedger (@cnLedger) February 18, 2017
It is not hard to see why these two pools are operated by the same people. Looking over the statistics for the mining pools, all of the warning signs are there. Perhaps the most obvious sign is how ViaBTC lost 22 petahash of mining power overnight, which magically appeared at Canoepool. The bigger question is what Jihan Wu is trying to achieve by tricking people into believing Bitcoin Unlimited support is larger than it is in reality.
This type of behavior creates a lot of controversy in the bitcoin world. Many people are growing concerned about the tactics deployed by some Bitcoin Unlimited supporters. Running “fake pools” is a very desperate effort to get more people to support BU, which does not reflect all that well on the development of the project itself. There is no need to create fake pools to get a point across, as behavior like this will only have an adverse effect in the long run.
It is evident the discussion between BU and SegWit is far from over. Artificially inflating support for either solution is a bad show of character, that much is certain. If Bitcoin unlimited had any hopes of being taken seriously in the future, stories like these will not lend it any credibility whatsoever.
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