Ocean vs Braiins: Stratum V2, DATUM, and what decentralization is actually worth in dollars

*Last updated: 2026-08-25*

TL;DR

Two pools get named more than any others when people talk about decentralizing Bitcoin mining, and they take opposite routes. Braiins built Stratum V2 and asks you to flash Braiins OS onto your ASIC. Ocean pays miners straight from the coinbase transaction and, through DATUM Gateway, already lets you build your own block template today.

What the official docs confirm:

• Braiins Pool charges 2.5%, runs FPPS (since December 2023), holds funds custodially, pays out daily at 09:00 UTC, sets an onchain minimum of 0.0002 BTC and a fee-free threshold at 0.005 BTC, and offers Lightning with no lower limit.
• Ocean charges 2%, or 1% if you mine through DATUM. It uses TIDES and pays non-custodially inside the coinbase. Standard payout threshold is 0.01048576 BTC.
• Miner-side transaction selection works today on Ocean via DATUM. On Braiins it appears in the Stratum V2 manual in the future tense: the protocol "will eventually enable miners to work on their own block templates."
• Neither pool publishes a number for how much Stratum V2 or DATUM cuts stale rate or lifts revenue. Both describe the benefit qualitatively. Percentages you find in third-party reviews trace back to nobody's official documentation.

The money: at 100 TH/s earning $3.10 per day (snapshot from the August pool comparison), the gap between 2.5% and 1% is roughly 4.7 cents a day, about $17 a year. At 1 PH/s, about $170 a year.

[IMAGE: photorealistic daytime shot of a small home mining setup by a window overlooking a green garden, sunlight, an ASIC next to a small single-board computer running a node]

Side by side

What is the fee difference actually worth?

At 100 TH/s and $3.10 a day, one percentage point of fee equals 3.1 cents. Moving from Braiins at 2.5% to Ocean at 1% with DATUM saves roughly 4.7 cents a day, close to $17 a year. Without DATUM the 2.5% versus 2% gap shrinks to 1.6 cents a day, about $5.70 a year.

The arithmetic is the same one covered in the August comparison: a pool fee is taken from the same expected share of network reward everywhere, not from some proprietary yield. So the spread is a flat percentage of revenue with no adjustments.

Scale is what changes the conversation. At 1 PH/s the same 1.5 points come to roughly 47 cents a day and about $170 a year. At 10 PH/s you are near $1,700 a year, and the hours spent standing up a node with a Gateway pay for themselves in days. On a single home ASIC, $17 a year will not justify reflashing firmware or babysitting a node. If you do it at that scale, you are doing it for a different reason.

FPPS and TIDES also behave differently over time. FPPS pays a flat amount per share including the transaction-fee component. TIDES pays across a sliding window and by design gives you a lumpier income curve. Both mechanics are broken down in the piece on pool payout schemes.

What Stratum V2 gives you at Braiins, and why it is not DATUM

Stratum V2 is an open protocol Braiins developed together with Bitcoin developer Matt Corallo. It encrypts the channel, blocks man-in-the-middle tampering between miner and pool, and moves data more efficiently than the old Stratum. You connect with `stratum2+tcp://` on the same port you already use.

What it does not give you today: the block template still arrives from the pool. Braiins documentation puts miner-built templates in the future tense. The protocol laid the groundwork for handing transaction selection to miners, but a Braiins Pool user in 2026 is not using that groundwork as a feature yet.

DATUM approaches the same problem from the other end. It is software, not a protocol. You run a Bitcoin full node, put DATUM Gateway next to it, point your hashrate at the Gateway, and start submitting templates you assembled yourself. Ocean frames this as making Bitcoin censorship resistant again. Technically it is precisely the thing Braiins does not yet ship in working form.

The entry cost differs too. Braiins wants your ASICs off stock firmware, with whatever that implies for warranty and vendor support. Ocean wants a machine hosting a full chain and someone keeping it healthy. Neither is free. You just pay in different currencies.

Is Ocean's non-custodial payout worth a 0.01 BTC threshold?

Non-custodial at Ocean means your share is written directly into the coinbase transaction of a found block. The pool never holds your bitcoin between blocks, so it cannot freeze or lose it. In exchange you accept a high payout threshold: 0.01048576 BTC against 0.0002 BTC at Braiins.

How long that takes needs no BTC price, because the wait is counted directly in bitcoin. Net income at 100 TH/s from the August snapshot is 0.00004803 BTC per day. Divide the threshold by that figure:

• 0.01048576 / 0.00004803 ≈ 218 days at 100 TH/s
• 0.01048576 / 0.0004803 ≈ 22 days at 1 PH/s

The math holds at current difficulty. The reward for the same hardware declines over time, so the real wait ends up longer, and the further you are from the snapshot date the bigger the gap. The mechanics are covered in our article on why your mining reward keeps dropping. Lightning softens the picture, since Ocean allows withdrawals before the standard threshold is reached.

The risk you remove is real. Any custodial pool is an account someone else controls. Braiins is no different from most large pools here, since FPPS structurally requires the pool to collect the reward first and distribute afterward.

The risk you add is real too, and it is about time. Until the threshold fills, the money sits with the pool, and the smaller the farm, the longer the first payout takes. Exactly how many days 0.01048576 BTC takes at 100 TH/s depends on the BTC price used [PLACEHOLDER: ask the user which BTC price to use as the base for calculating Ocean threshold fill time at 100 TH/s and 1 PH/s]. Lightning softens this: Ocean allows Lightning withdrawals before the standard threshold is met.

Thresholds and their effect on small farms get more room in the breakdown of miner profiles by farm size.

Do you have to give up KYC-free pools to get decentralization?

No. These are separate axes. Decentralization here is about who assembles the block template and who holds funds between payouts. Anonymity is about what a pool knows about you. Ocean and Braiins land in different places on the first axis, but the two topics deserve separate analysis rather than being collapsed into one.

If privacy is the priority rather than block structure, the roundup of no-KYC mining pools is the more useful read. If you want to check your own farm in numbers before switching anything, start with the profitability calculator.

Solo as a third option

Braiins runs a separate solo endpoint at `solo.stratum.braiins.com` with a 0.5% fee that goes to the ckpool developers whose stack Braiins uses. No Braiins Pool account needed, your username is your BTC address.

It is not a revenue alternative, it is a different risk class: the whole block or nothing. But in a conversation about decentralization, solo remains the most direct version of it, and 0.5% next to the same operator's 2.5% is worth noticing.

[IMAGE: photorealistic daytime shot, a person with a laptop on an open porch surrounded by trees, hashrate chart on screen, bright sunny light]

Who each one fits

Braiins Pool fits if your farm is big enough to justify flashing Braiins OS across it, if you want the flat predictable payout FPPS gives, and if you want frequent withdrawals on a small balance. The 0.0002 BTC minimum and daily 09:00 UTC payouts suit anyone who does not want to accumulate for months.

Ocean fits if non-custodial payout is a principle for you, if you already run a full node or do not mind adding one, and if your farm is large enough that 1.5 percentage points turn into money you can feel. The 0.01048576 BTC threshold rules out small home setups unless you withdraw over Lightning.

Neither should be chosen for a promised efficiency gain from Stratum V2 or DATUM, because neither pool has publicly measured one. Pick on fee, custody, threshold, and how much infrastructure you are willing to maintain.

FAQ

Does Stratum V2 really let miners choose transactions?

Not yet. The protocol is designed for it, but Braiins documentation describes work on miner-built block templates as a future capability rather than something available now. What Stratum V2 delivers today is channel encryption, MITM protection, and more efficient communication with the pool. Miner-side transaction selection is live at Ocean through DATUM.

How much does DATUM reduce stale rate?

No official figure exists. Ocean describes the effect qualitatively, as reducing variance without compromising decentralization, and publishes no percentage. Braiins gives no quantitative claim for Stratum V2 either. Any specific percentage in a third-party review is that party's estimate, not a pool statement.

Do I have to flash Braiins OS to mine at Braiins Pool?

No. You can mine on stock firmware over regular Stratum. Braiins OS is required specifically for Stratum V2 connections, since stock ASIC firmware does not support the protocol. The pool fee stays at 2.5% either way.

Can I use DATUM without running my own node?

No. DATUM Gateway builds templates from the mempool of your own Bitcoin full node, so the node is mandatory. It can share hardware with the Gateway. Without a node you simply mine at Ocean the normal way at 2% rather than 1%.