P2Pool V2 is running a decentralized Bitcoin mining share chain on testnet, testing a model in which miners coordinate through peer-to-peer nodes rather than relying on one pool operator to select transactions, count work and distribute rewards. The project's website says participating nodes can independently verify shares and payout calculations. Independent reporting by TokenPost on November 15 confirmed that the system remains on testnet while share trading and preparations for a mainnet release are still in development.

The share chain records work outside Bitcoin blocks

Mining pools let many participants combine computing power and smooth the uncertainty of finding a Bitcoin block, but the operator commonly measures contributed work and controls the payout ledger. P2Pool V2 instead records lower-difficulty proofs of work as shares in a separate peer-to-peer chain. A share is structured like a Bitcoin block but targets an easier threshold. When a share also satisfies Bitcoin's network target, it can become a Bitcoin block and pay eligible miners. The project says shares arrive roughly every 10 seconds on its running test network.

Related reporting: Bitcoin Block Timestamp Runs Three Minutes Behind Its Parent

Uncles and variable difficulty target small-miner variance

The design allows a share to reference as many as three late or competing shares, called uncles, so honest work that loses a propagation race can still receive partial credit. According to the project's technical overview, an uncle receives a 10% discount and the share that includes it receives a corresponding bonus. A locally operated Stratum server also applies variable difficulty for each miner, targeting a share from each connected worker about every three seconds. These mechanisms are intended to make reported hashrate and reward accounting more responsive for smaller machines, though testnet behavior does not establish future mainnet economics.

Payout scaling is only partly complete

For a discovered Bitcoin block, P2Pool V2 plans to pay the largest contributors directly through outputs in the block's coinbase transaction. Smaller contributors would receive outputs on the share chain and sell them to market makers for bitcoin through hash-timelocked atomic swaps using Lightning or Ark. Paying the Lightning invoice or Ark contract would reveal the same secret needed to claim the share output, limiting either party's ability to take one side of the exchange without completing the other. The project explicitly labels share trading, wallet support and the swap flow as work in progress, so those mechanisms should not be described as live miner payouts today.

The approach goes beyond template decentralization

Stratum V2 and DATUM can reduce a pool operator's control over block-template construction by letting miners choose transactions. P2Pool V2 is attempting to extend decentralization to share accounting and payout verification as well. Its public repository is open source and provides node software, configuration examples and development tracking, while the project recommends that miners run their own nodes instead of simply pointing hardware at another person's endpoint. Success would not eliminate mining variance, hardware costs or the need for sufficient network participation. It would instead move more coordination rules into software that participants can inspect and verify. The next meaningful tests are whether the share chain remains reliable with more participants, whether atomic-swap liquidity works for small payouts and when the developers consider the system ready for mainnet use.

Sources

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