On November 28, decentralized Bitcoin mining pool OCEAN announced that it had raised $6.3 million in seed funding. The seed round was led by Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Block Inc. and co-founder and former CEO of Twitter/X.

OCEAN Mining Pool is the first non-custodial platform where miners receive block rewards directly from Bitcoin’s Coinbase transactions, eliminating the risks associated with traditional mining pools withholding payments from individual miners.

Most mining pools today use a payment plan called full pay per share. Mining pools pay miners from their internal treasury based on the work they perform for the pool. In turn, when a block is found, Bitcoin is paid directly to the mining pool. In this way, the mining pool effectively becomes a custodian of funds and acts as an intermediary between miners and Bitcoin. This creates significant counterparty risk for miners similar to holding Bitcoin on an exchange. OCEAN is non-custodial, and when miners use OCEAN, they are paid directly from the Bitcoin network in Coinbase transactions.

OCEAN also aims to solve several major problems facing Bitcoin mining. The most important one is the centralization of block template construction.

“While hashrate may be distributed globally, the reality is that a significant portion of mining (running full nodes, adopting transactions, building block templates) is performed by a very small number of individuals and the mining pools they control,” said Bitcoin Mechanic, Global Head of Sales at OCEAN. “This is a situation where a few have undue influence over the majority and has the potential to harm Bitcoin.” Upon launch, OCEAN will provide miners with a way to independently perform block template construction while still reaping the economic benefits of being a member of a mining pool.