Quote from: drmadison on May 12, 2020, 09:08:05 PM

Honest question... we have 10 pools making up like 90% of solved blocks according to https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/pools/ and https://www.blockchain.com/pools (not sure the validity of these, but they seem to agree).
But even if it's not QUITE that desperate, with the mega-mines making up the vast majority of hashrate, and the effective impossibility of the "casual home miner" to even mine at a break-even rate, how is this really decentralized anymore?

First you need to understand what is a mining pool. It's not a mining company with thousands of mining rigs working at its backyard. A simple illustration of a mining pool is below,

It consists of thousands of individual or corporate miners of all sizes. The form up together so that they can have a better chance of finding a block. They don't change the rules of the bitcoin network.

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I came in when it was CPU and then GPU mining. Anyone could start mining and make a small amount of bitcoin, and it wouldn't cost thousands in electricity, it really felt like it was "the people's" but now it's just giant corporations that control it all.

A few things first - yes, I know there are altcoins but this is about Bitcoin specifically. And yes I know some of the hashrate of those huge pools are made up of individual miners, but I'm willing to bet it's a very small fraction.

I thought so! However, there are home miners who have successfully ramped-up their mining operation to cope-up with the increasing difficulty. Also we have a group of ex-miners who couldn't ramp-up their operations due to various reasons and fallen out of the league. That certainly doesn't mean that the bitcoin network is becoming centralized.

I believe mining pools are providing better chance to small miners to earn some rewards at least. If mining pools were never existed, the small miners wouldn't have a chance to earn mining rewards at all. Re-think the opportunity!