Tether and OCEAN Reach Cooperation to Reshape Bitcoin Mining Landscape with DATUM Protocol
Recently, stablecoin issuer Tether announced an important partnership with decentralized mining pool OCEAN, which will gradually deploy existing and future Bitcoin mining power to the OCEAN platform, focusing on expanding the African market.
This strategic transformation marks Tether's shift from traditional mining operations to supporting a more decentralized mining protocol, primarily adopting the DATUM technology solution developed by Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr's team.
The innovation of this protocol lies in allowing miners to bypass centralized mining pools and directly construct block templates through local nodes, particularly suitable for regions in Africa with relatively weak network infrastructure.
Tether's CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that this decision came after months of technical evaluation, aimed at supporting the resilience of the Bitcoin network's foundational layer.
In fact, this is Tether's second important initiative in Africa. Previously, the company collaborated with the Nigerian crypto platform Quidax to promote digital asset education.
The goal is to build a unique Bitcoin ecosystem for emerging markets through a dual-track strategy of "technology export + localized operations."
It is worth noting that the DATUM protocol, with its modular architecture, can aggregate miner connections in low-bandwidth environments. This feature will also be applied to Tether's mining operations in other regions, such as Latin America, helping to improve mining efficiency worldwide.
Market analysts point out that this move is a beneficial attempt to combat the centralization of computing power and demonstrates Tether's ambition to transform from a mere stablecoin issuer to a more comprehensive blockchain infrastructure provider.
However, with the pressure on miner earnings increasing after Bitcoin's halving, such technological solutions that can reduce operating costs and enhance autonomy may gain more attention.
Nevertheless, under the current monopoly of mining pools, whether decentralized mining models can truly become widespread remains to be seen in terms of their practical implementation and economic benefits.
Do you believe in Tether's mining layout in Africa? Do you value mining profits or the concept of decentralization more? Do you think decentralized mining is the future trend? Leave your views in the comments!