There has been a large amount of ruckus in the past week about the issue of mining centralization in the Bitcoin network. We saw a single mining pool, GHash.io, amass over 45% hashpower for many hours, and at one point even grow to become 51% of the entire network. The entire front page of the Bitcoin reddit was ablaze in intense discussion and a rare clash of complacency and fear, miners quickly mobilized to take their hashpower off GHash, and surprisingly clever strategies were used in an attempt to bring back the balance between the different pools, up to and including one miner with “between 50 TH/s and 2 PH/s” mining at GHash but refusing to forward valid blocks, essentially sabotating all mines on the pool to the extent of up to 4%. Now, the situation has somewhat subsided, with GHash down to 35% network hashpower and the runner up, Discus Fish, up to 16%, and it is likely that the situation will remain that way for at least a short while before things heat up again. Is the problem solved? Of course not. Can the problem be solved? That will be the primary subject of this post.